Real Estate Jargon: Decoded (Part One)

Real estate can be a tricky thing. If you’ve ever heard agents, developers or anyone in the business talk about real estate, you can quickly observe that we’ve got essentially our own language that isn’t always easy to follow along with. When every clause has a name, every type of loan and deed is different and every spelling change means something different, it’s easy to get lost in the middle of a sentence. So, we decided we filled you in on a little vernacular that you may have heard, but may have heard but didn’t immediately understand. We’ll be doing a few of these, so let us know if you have any words you’d like decoded!

Real estate doesn't have to sound like a foreign language!

1)      Quitclaim Deed: Like we said before, there are tons of different types of deeds, leases and agreements. This one in particular isn’t brought up all the time, so people often don’t know what it means.

What it means:  Essentially, when an owner of real property transfers their interest to someone else, that’s called a quitclaim deed. There’s no title covenant, which means there’s no warranty on the property and that even the original owner had a clean title to begin with, so these aren’t usually used in standard seller-to-buyer deals.

Where you’d see it: You’d see this more often when passing property between family members or from private property into a business entity. You can also see this done when a couple divorces and either the husband or wife relinquishes all ownership to the marital house to the other spouse.

2)       Sublet: This is actually more of a rental term, but with the amount of renting going on in the market, it’s rather handy to know what it means.

What it means: To sublet a property means that someone who is leasing a property decides to then lease the property again.

Where you’d see it: This is often the case if a management company is renting an apartment complex and then leases individual units to residents. Another way you often see this is when college students study abroad or leave for the summer and sublet their apartment when they’re gone.

3)      Amortization:  Sometimes in real estate, we have fancy sounding terms that are just there to cover the basics of common sense. This is one of those terms.

What it means: When you take out a mortgage and you make regular payments on it, you’re paying to make the original principal amount decrease and to cover the interest you’ve accrued. Amortization is the process in which that original principal goes down.

Where you’d see it: Oftentimes, you can see amortization tables that will demonstrate to you how your principal amount decreases over time.

Real estate can seem daunting, but with a little insider intel, you’ll be speaking like the pros in no time! We’ll do another word decoding in a couple weeks- any terms you’d like covered? If so, let us know, and we’ll explain them next time!