Many buyers get use the terms “Deposit” and “Down Payment” interchangeably, but the two are very different, and confusing them can cause problems. Read the rest of this entry »

The listing price of a property is the price at which the owner has indicated that they will sell the property. Read the rest of this entry »

A CMA, variously expanded as “Comparable Market Analysis”, “Competitive Market Analysis”, and “Comparative Marketing Analysis”, is an informal estimate of a property's market value based on recent sales of similar properties. Read the rest of this entry »

PITI is an abbreviation for “Principal, Interest, Taxes, and Insurance”. Read the rest of this entry »

A Multiple Listing Service, or MLS, is service run by or on behalf of a group of real estate brokers who have agreed to share their property listings; the brokers each submit the properties that they have contracts to represent (their “listed properties”, or “listings”) to the MLS, which then provides a combined directory of all such listings to all of the member brokers. Read the rest of this entry »

Fizzbo is an alternate, phonetic, spelling of FSBO.

For Sale By Owner is a term commonly used in the real estate industry when referring to a property being sold without the use of a licensed real estate professional; it is also often used to refer to the owner/sellers of such properties themselves. Read the rest of this entry »

FSBO is real estate jargon for For Sale By Owner. Read the rest of this entry »

A deed of trust is a document that records a lender's lien on a property as security towards a loan. Read the rest of this entry »