Acceleration Clause
Acceleration Clause is a contractual provision inserted in a mortgage, a bond, a deed of trust or other credit vehicles, that gives the lender the right to demand repayment of the entire loan balance. Usually, such a clause becomes operational when there has been a default in payments of interest or principal or both.
When the acceleration clause is activated, the entire principal sum is called in and becomes due and payable. This fact would precipitate a foreclosure in the case of real estate, or bankruptcy action if the monies were not paid at the time of the call.
Acceleration clauses are created to protect the lender from borrower default and other risks. It prevents/deals with payment delinquencies, but can, on rare occasions, be structured for other occurrences too.
Let's see an acceleration clause in effect scenario:
Home Seller Barbara makes a Land Contract with Home Buyer Paul. He started paying correctly and living in Barbara's former house. He has paid already $30,000 of its $100,000 contract. At the end of it, he'll be the owner of the house. BUT: he didn't pay for the last 3 months, so the acceleration clause kicked in, Barbara filed for a land contract forfeiture and now Paul has to pay the rest of the $70,000 with one swing if he wants to still be able to get the house. Or else, they're done.
Accelerate your home buying/home selling process: find a real estate agent
Popular Real Estate Terms
Statue designed to protect lenders if a seller secretly sells substantially all of the business property. The objective of the law is to safeguard against defrauding creditors. ...
Within Real Estate, “nuisance” is a term used to describe any disturbance that might affect neighboring houses. Nuisance abatement is the enforcing of policies and codes that ...
Method of selling and obtains possession, but the seller retains the title. ...
Inspection required in certain types of sales of property to determine if termites are present within a building. ...
A roof having two slopes on each side. The second slope is longer than the first part of the roof and extremely steep. ...
Contract that intends to convey property form one individual to another but is defective in one respect. ...
Section of the Internal Revenue Code that addresses tax-free exchanges of certain property. The general provisions for a tax-free exchange of real estate are that the properties must be ...
Rental agreement directly between the landlord and tenant. If the tenant then rents it out to another, it is referred to as a sublease. The relationship takes the following form: ...
In order to define the rate of return on investment, or more commonly known as ROI we are also going to explain how it can be calculated and what to look for in the return rate. Investing ...

Have a question or comment?
We're here to help.