Understanding Real Estate Terms

Thinking about buying or selling and want to learn some of the real estate legal terms?

Here is a crash course!

Conditions can be included in an offer to purchase to protect the buyer to obtain

additional information before the purchase is final.

Here are some common conditions:

Sold Conditionally- Sellers have accepted an offer but conditions need to be met.

Condition of finance- is a clause in your offer to purchase that gives you a period of time to confirm you are able to get a mortgage approval for the home you want to buy.

Condition of Inspection- clause is a provision in a buyer agreement that states that the sale of the property is contingent on the results of a home inspection. This means that if the home inspector finds any major problems with the property, you have the right to back out of the sale. I must stress MAJOR problems. This can’t be used for something common and easily repairable.

Condition of sale- The buyers need to sell their home before their offer is firm.

If a home in the country- They may want a condition to review the water well/ watertesting, Septic maintenance and if any shared Well agreements.

Status Certificate condition- This applies to condos for a lawyer to review numerous items such as financials, reserve funds, pending litigation, rules of the condo, insurance and claims, parking assigned to the unit.

Sold Firm- The home is sold, no conditions to be met and awaiting closing date.

Holdover Period- The holdover period is a defined amount time following the expiration of a listing agreement during which the listing brokerage would be entitled to a commission if the property were sold to someone who was introduced to it while it was listed.

Designated Representative- real estate professionals are sole agents for all of their clients.

Multiple Representation occurs when an agent acts for two or more parties to the same Real Estate transaction; a buyer and a seller, or two unique buyers.

Deposit- If an offer is accepted by a seller, regardless of conditions, the buyer is to provide a deposit to the listing brokerage within 24 hours, unless otherwise stated in the offer. This amount is disclosed in the listing details for agents to see.

A patent defect is a visible defect. It is something that is easy to see or observe. This might be a crack in the home, hole in the wall or broken windows.

A latent defect is a non-visible defect. This is

something that you cannot see or observe without further investigation. A seller MUST disclose any latent defects with their property.

There are numerous terms, but these are some common ones to guide you through the process.

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