In the world of banking, mortgages are only on land property, including homes on land property.
The distinction is in the term, which is usually considerably long (30 years on average) and the interest rate is usually lower than with a regular loan, where repayments are usually no more than two or three years and the rates are higher. Plus, in the U.S., interest on mortgages can still be written off on taxes, even though, before the 1980s, this was the case with all loan interest.
Basically, it is a legal distinction.
I used to work in a bank, so this is how I know this.
Melon
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"He had lived through an age when men and women with energy and ruthlessness but without much ability or persistence excelled. And even though most of them had gone under, their ignorance had confused Roy, making him wonder whether the things he had striven to learn, and thought of as 'culture,' were irrelevant. Everything was supposed to be the same: commercials, Beethoven's late quartets, pop records, shopfronts, Freud, multi-coloured hair. Greatness, comparison, value, depth: gone, gone, gone. Anything could give some pleasure; he saw that. But not everything provided the sustenance of a deeper understanding." - Hanif Kureishi, Love in a Blue Time
