Chattel Mortgage

"Chattel" is just a fancy word for "movable property."

You can get a mortgage on your house. But that's not chattel (typically, if you're not Dorothy flying off to Oz or the guy from Up, your house isn't going anywhere). However, there are other expensive items you might finance with a mortgage that you can move around. For these, there's a chattel mortgage.

For an individual, this could include things like mobile homes. For businesses, it can include equipment or heavy machinery.

There's also a dark history for this term. During slavery, owners would often mortgage their slaves. Those mortgages were officially chattel mortgages, just as the form of slavery practiced in the U.S. was known as "chattel slavery."

This connotation of "chattel" still comes up frequently, giving the word something of a bad aroma in general parlance. However, paired with the word "mortgage" in the world of finance, it's currently a completely respectable way to get secured loans for big-ticket movable items.