Absentee Landlord

a term applied to land owners who live abroad. The term was originally applied to the owners of Irish estates, who lived customarily in London or elsewhere, managing their property through resident agents. Many Irish riots may be traced to the hard dealings of agents under instructions to collect rents to be expended, as the peasantry thought, and no doubt justly, in more or less riotous living. The evil of absenteeism has been remedied in Ireland by an act authorizing tenants of lands to purchase their holdings at a fair value, the money for that purpose being loaned them, on the land as security, by the government. A somewhat similar state of absenteeism existed in Hungary after its union with Austria; but of late the Hungarian nobles have shown more pride in residing amongst their own people. In America the term is used to refer to wealthy Americans who prefer to live abroad on the income derived from their American property. See Ireland