History Main / LandPoor

* Lady Ludlow in the 2007 TV adaptation of {{Cranford}}. She resists the railway being brought through her grounds because she wants to hand the estate down intact to her son Septimus, and protect the livelihoods of the estate workers. She mortgages the estate against the wishes of steward Edmund Carter.

* In ''TheMoneyPit'', the protagonists buy a BigFancyHouse for a huge discount - and the repairs become a [[http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/5826/herculean.html HerculeanTask]].

* ''DowntonAbbey''; The Crawleys were short of money before Robert married a wealthy American, despite owning a large stately home and most of the nearby village. [[spoiler: When Cora loses her fortune in series 3, they are faced with the prospect of selling the house (and moving into a ''smaller stately home they also own''), but they're rescued in the end.]]

* Helen Hayes plays this role in ''HerbieRidesAgain''.

* Russian: has to do with {{dacha}}s. In the Soviet Union, there was little differentiation between the rich and the poor, real estate prices were tightly regulated by the state, and many families could have a dacha. After the fall of the Union, many people got impoverished, real estate prices near major cities skyrocketed, but some clinged to their old property, and you can often see a poor family that maintains an inherited run-down dacha in a prestigious location like the near Moscow Oblast.

* Russian: has to do with dachas. In the Soviet Union, there was little differentiation between the rich and the poor, real estate prices were tightly regulated by the state, and many families could have a dacha. After the fall of the Union, many people got impoverished, real estate prices near major cities skyrocketed, and you can often see a poor family that maintains an inherited run-down dacha in a prestigious location like the near Moscow Oblast.

* Part of the plot of the movie ''[[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053877/ The Grass Is Greener]]'' (1960) with Robert Mitchum and Cary Grant. Part of the synopsis:

* ''TheLifeAndTimesOfScroogeMcDuck'' deals with the [=McDuck=] family becoming too poor to maintain Castle [=McDuck=] at one point, although their ancestors were originally driven away by a supposedly ghostly hound.

** Their dojo is in Nerima, which is a border district and was mainly farmland in the past. Up to this day it still has the largest proportion of farmland among all of Tokyo's special wards, and thus the property value isn't on the general Tokyo level. So the large estates aren't all that unusual for the neighborhood, even if it's decidedly middle-class.

* In Mildred D. Taylor's YA novel ''[=~Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry~=]'' and its sequels, which are set in Mississippi during the Depression, the fact that the black Logan family owns its own land gives them relative freedom and dignity compared to the other black families in the area, who are all sharecroppers and thus totally beholden to the people whose land they live on and farm. (TruthInTelevision for the era, obviously -- after Reconstruction, the sharecropping/tenant farming system that set it was in some ways practically indistinguishable from slavery.)

* European (ImpoverishedPatrician): the character feels that they have an obligation to all of their ancestors and decendants to keep the family estates in order, but no longer has the actual money-generating capacity to keep it going. Their efforts to earn enough to keep the property pristine while paying the property taxes make excellent plot fodder, whether PlayedForDrama or PlayedForLaughs. In some cases, the estate may have been [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee_tail#England entailed]] making it impossible to sell even if the character ''wants'' to.

* In the war movie / comedy ''FatherGoose'', Cary Grant is tricked by the British government into being stranded on a desert island -- along with the wreckage of his yacht, which he tries to repair throughout the film.

* A significant portion of the series [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarch_of_the_Glen Monarch of the Glen]] dealt with the financial difficulties of the [[MeaningfulName aptly - named]] Glenbogle estate.

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** Their dojo is in Nerima, which is a border district and was mainly farmland in the past. Up to this day it still has the largest proportion of farmland in all of Tokyo's special wards, and thus the property value isn't on the general Tokyo level. So the large estates aren't all that unusual for the neighborhood, even if it's decidedly middle-class.

* In ''TenchiMuyo'', Tenchi's family owns property that apparently includes a shrine, carrot farm, lake, large wilderness areas, and a Big Fancy House. His father is a professor of architecture, and his UnwantedHarem includes a SuperVillain, two princesses, the grandaughter of the chief of the galaxy police, and a super-scientist. Dispite this, his family can barely afford to send him to college, and his UnwantedHarem can barely afford to eat even working multiple jobs. The one time he asked one of the princesses to ask her dad for some money, ''he sent enough gold to destabilize the Earth's economy'', which, of course, they had to send back for fear of runaway inflation.

* Kathleen Kelly in ''[=~You've Got Mail~=]'' owns a small business forced to compete with a chain store. [[spoiler: She ends up working for the chain.]]
** [[spoiler: No, she doesn't. She starts writing children's novels thanks to years of selling and knowing children's books and her connections in the market (nd starting to date the owner of the chain) it's assumed that will go well for her.]]

* Lady Saint Edmund from ''[[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075807/ Candleshoe]]''.