She has lived in Canada her whole life and is White. She asked me if it were possible to own a building without owning the land that the building was on and I explained how it is and that's how many properties on Indian land are setup. I then went in to say, it's not that common of a setup outside of Indian land as far as I know but apparently, it's fairly common in NYC according to Trump's book. She scowled almost immediately. "You read Trump's books?" I told her I did because I like to stay informed about things and it was actually a pretty good book that was written well before his political days that mostly focused on the real estate side. I told her I read Mark Carney's book also. "Who's that?" She replied. "You don't know who the Prime Minister of Canada is?" "I guess not because I don't know who that is" she replied.
And Canadians like to pretend they're more informed than Americans.
A Tribe in BC (years ago) rented out building plots for people to build very large & expensive houses. 40 I think? The "rent" was $10K per year, the home owners didn't own the property, just the houses, but had a 5 year renewable lease supposed to last 100 years. Quite reasonable, property taxes for houses like that are often much higher than 10K.
After 5 years they raised the "rent" to 10K PER MONTH with the threat of the next 5 year raise it even more.
Indian Givers is not derogatory enough.
Their plan was to take the houses over once everyone abandoned them. Some actually stayed, some managed to move the buildings & one guy set his on fire, burned it to the ground. Because it was on "Indian Land" it was perfectly legal, not covered by city or provincial laws against such things.
Anyhow, it is entirely possible to buy a building but not own the land beneath it.