Rent seeking does not include those persons that may have invested substantial capital improvements to a piece of land, but rather those that perform in their role as mere titleholder. This is the dividing line between a rent-seeker and a property developer, which need not be the same person.

Rent-seeking is an attempt to obtain economic rent (i.e., the portion of income paid to a factor of production in excess of what is needed to keep it employed in its current use) by manipulating the social or political environment in which economic activities occur, rather than by creating new wealth. Rent-seeking implies extraction of uncompensated value from others without making any contribution to productivity. Because the nature of rent-seeking implies a fixed cost payment, only wealthy participants engage in these activities as a means of protecting their wealth from expropriation.

Is marketing rent seeking?