Where cozy means tiny and charming means needs work.
A listing adjective that means the house is old, small, or both, but has at least one original feature the agent can romanticize. Translation: nothing has been updated since the Carter administration, but look at these original hardwood floors.
The relationship status of a house that's been claimed but not yet closed, like being engaged but for property. Everyone holds their breath until closing, and there's always a chance someone gets cold feet.
A scheduled event where strangers wander through your home, judge your decorating choices, and eat your cookies with zero intention of buying. It's basically hosting a party where the guests critique your life.
Short for comparables, these are recently sold nearby homes that agents use to justify whatever price they want. Finding the right comps is an art form -- you just cherry-pick the ones that support your narrative.
The art of making a house look irresistible from the street so buyers fall in love before noticing the interior looks like a crime scene. A fresh coat of paint and some petunias can apparently add fifty thousand dollars to a listing.
A chunk of cash you hand over to prove you're serious about buying, because apparently signing seventeen documents wasn't convincing enough. It's a trust fall with your savings account.
Government rules about what you can and cannot do with your own property, because apparently buying it doesn't mean you get to decide what happens on it. Want to build a shed? That'll be six permits and a public hearing.
When the bank decides it wants its house back, like a toddler reclaiming a toy it forgot about until someone else started playing with it. One person's financial tragedy is another person's "investment opportunity."
A property that's supposedly ready to move into without any work, assuming your definition of "no work" includes ignoring the builder-grade everything and carpet that's technically beige but spiritually defeated.
The period where you pretend to be a detective, an engineer, and an accountant all at once to figure out if a property is a goldmine or a money pit. Spoiler: it's usually somewhere between "fine" and "oh no."
The value you add to a property through your own labor, tears, and increasingly creative profanity. It's free if you don't count the hospital visits, marriage counseling, and weekends you'll never get back.
A Real Estate Investment Trust that lets you invest in property without ever unclogging a toilet or dealing with a tenant who thinks rent is optional. It's landlording for people who prefer spreadsheets over plungers.
A nearby property that supposedly proves your house is worth what someone says it is, despite having completely different everything. It's the real estate version of comparing apples to slightly different apples that sold six months ago.
The seller's personal hype person whose job is to make a perfectly average house sound like a French chateau. They are professional poets who can make a closet-sized bathroom sound like a spa retreat.
The final tour of a home before closing where you discover all the things that broke between the inspection and now. It's supposed to be a formality but often turns into a horror movie.
Closing on a house faster than normal, usually because someone is desperate, flush with cash, or both. It's the speed dating of real estate -- exciting, reckless, and you skip all the important conversations.
The government's opinion of what your property is worth, used exclusively to calculate how much tax you owe. It's magically always high enough to maximize your tax bill but too low to impress your neighbors.
Short for For Sale By Owner, which is real estate speak for "I watched one YouTube video and now I don't need a professional." The savings on commission are usually offset by the cost of mistakes only a professional would have caught.
When a homeowner sells their property for less than they owe on the mortgage, which sounds quick but actually takes approximately seven hundred years of bank approvals. The only thing short about it is the seller's patience.
The public countdown timer that silently shames a property for not selling fast enough. After 30 days, neighbors start whispering. After 90, the house might as well have a scarlet letter on the lawn sign.
The seller's polite way of saying "we know it's broken and we don't care." Buying a property as-is is basically adopting a feral house and hoping love alone can fix the plumbing.
Insurance that protects you in case someone crawls out of the woodwork claiming they actually own your house. You pay for it once, pray you never need it, and wonder what kind of chaos could possibly require it. Spoiler: the chaos is always there.
A property for sale that's kept secret from the general public, like a speakeasy for houses. Only the agent's inner circle gets to know about it, which is definitely not exclusionary at all.
Short for capitalization rate, it's a number that tells investors whether a property will make money or just slowly drain their soul and savings. The higher the cap rate, the better the return, unless you forgot to factor in literally anything else.