Properties are key-value-pairs where Apache Ant tries to expand ${key} to value at runtime.
Ant properties are very helpful if you have to do a lot to processing to create installables or do custom deployments etc.
For example, you can mark ${src.dir} as source code directory,${lib.dir} as library for project,${javadoc.dir} for javadocs etc.
Instead of writing complete path at every location you can refer them by this place holder.