The Pacific States form one of the nine geographic divisions within the United States that are officially recognized by that country's census bureau. There are five states in this division – Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington – and, as its name suggests, they all have coastlines on the Pacific Ocean (and are the only American states that border that ocean). The Pacific States division is one of two divisions that are located within the United States Census Bureau's Western region; the other Western division is the Mountain States.

Despite being slotted into the same region by the Census Bureau, the Pacific and Mountain divisions are vastly different from one another in many vital respects, most notably in the arena of politics; while nearly all of the Mountain states are regarded as being conservative "red states", four out of five of the Pacific states (all except Alaska) are clearly counted among the liberal "blue states."

The Northwest Coast of the Early and Middle Holocene epoch consists of the Pacific coastline from the mouth of the Copper River in Alaska to the Klamath River in northern California. The forager societies mainly consisted of hunter-gatherers whose most popular source of food was salmon. The people of this time and place lived in planked houses that were small and rectangular in shape. As the population of the Northwest Coast grew, social hierarchies were formed. Leadership was often given to shamans or kin leaders. They also held slaves. A factor in the size of the population was that of temperature. Within the last 5000 years, temperature has fluctuated greatly, bringing on the Medieval Warm Period.

An estate agent is a person or business that arranges the selling, renting or management of properties, and other buildings, in the United Kingdom and Ireland. An agent that specialises in renting is often called a letting or management agent. Estate agents are mainly engaged in the marketing of property available for sale and a solicitor or licensed conveyancer is used to prepare the legal documents. In Scotland, however, many solicitors also act as estate agents, a practice that is rare in England and Wales.

It is customary in the United Kingdom and in Ireland to refer to real estate or real property simply as property.

The estate agent remains the current title for the person responsible for the management of one group of privately owned, all or mostly tenanted, properties under one ownership. Alternative titles are Factor, Steward or Bailiff depending on the era, the region and the extent of the property concerned.

The term originally referred to a person responsible for managing a landed estate, while those engaged in the buying and selling of homes were "House Agents", and those selling land were "Land Agents". However, in the 20th century, "Estate Agent" started to be used as a generic term, perhaps because it was thought to sound more impressive. Estate agent is roughly synonymous in the United States with the term real estate broker.