The price paid (per unit of time) for the temporary use of a durable good (especially land and/or buildings) that the user does not own. Abbreviated expression for the specialized economists' term economic rent, which refers to the amount of any payment to the owner of a factor of production (land, labor or capital) that is above and beyond the minimum payment that would have been necessary to motivate that owner not to transfer it to some other use. Thus the economic rent in a sales transaction would be the difference between the payment actually received and the second-best price the owner could otherwise be getting for using that factor of production in some other application.

[See also: rent-seeking behavior, land, labor, capital, factors of production]