Definition of "Bill of sale"

Stephen Fivecoat real estate agent

Written by

Stephen Fivecoatelite badge icon

Ultima Real Estate

A Bill of Sale is a formal document of the sale of goods or the transfer of title for personal property and chattel from one party to another.

In sum, a bill of sale is a sort of receipt. It can be complex or simple, depending on the asset being sold or transferred and the conditions behind. A soda that you buy at a quick-mart, will warrant you that simple paper receipt detailing the seller’s information and the description of the product and its price. But when it comes to real estate, the bill of sale gets more complex.

Generally registered at the county office to make it official, the bill of sale fully describes the asset sold, localizing its lot lines and features, and basically states that the property has been paid for – showing receipts of payment and that no outstanding lien exists on it. In possession of this written bill of sale – that can be of something like 3 to 10 pages long, the buyer has a receipt for the right to sell the property at a later date.

Unfortunately, however, there are cases when the bill of sale is not enough, as an old undiscovered lien from a homeowner years before you might surface at a later date. That’s why is important, when buying a house, to have title insurance to make the legal proceedings faster and less expensive, and clear yourself of lien problems, redirecting them to the home seller.

Real Estate Agent:

Visit our Real Estate Questions page and figure out if any of your real estate doubts match the frequently asked ones!

image of a real estate dictionary page

Have a question or comment?

We're here to help.

*** Your email address will remain confidential.
 

 

Popular Real Estate Terms

Mortgage placed on a property after a previous mortgage. It can be a second, third, etc. mortgage. A junior mortgage is subordinate to the terms of a previous mortgage. Junior mortgages ...

Amount required to payoff the full balance of the mortgage today. The amount equals the principal balance plus any prepayment penalty. ...

Allocating common or central costs to each unit of property. An example is assigning to each owner of an apartment based on the number of rooms occupied the cost incurred by the landlord to ...

A backfill defines the act of replacing a vacant lot. People use a backfill as a replacement for an unoccupied position. Backfill in construction and archaeology! The most common ...

Claim by a real estate broker that his or her actions were the principal cause of the completion of a property sale between two parties. A successful procuring cause claim would entitle a ...

Natural resource, such as oil, coal, and timber, having a limited useful life and subject to depletion. Such assets decrease in worth primarily due to the extraction of the valued commodity ...

The rate at which a market can absorb additional units of supply without causing market saturation and severe price distortions. For example, during a recessionary period, many homeowners ...

A broad definition of termite clause is a provision in a contract for the sale of real property that gives the purchaser the right, at his or her expense, to have the property inspected for ...

The definition of a rambler house is quite simple in nowadays circumstances as any one-story home or ranch is also referred to as a rambler. The typical rambler house, however, has some ...

Popular Real Estate Questions