I read online that a Roman Senator needed something like 600 acres to qualify as a senator. This is alot less than many landed knights in england who might have had 1000 acres ( a small village). Who was owning all the land in Italy if not the Senators? Has their wealth been exagerated?
There was no property qualification for Roman senators before the time of Augustus, at which time it was fixed at one million sesterces (a unit of coin and a convenient measurement of wealth). There was never a specific requirement of owning property, at any time, much less such a ridiculously small number of 600 acres--that is just under one square mile. The average senator in 50 BCE owned thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of acres in landed estates.
Here is a good lesson for being very careful when "reading something online."