Real Estate Broker
One of the most recurring real estate doubts is regarding what is a broker in comparison to what is a real estate agent.
Well, it depends from state to state to tell exactly what a Broker can and cannot do, but it’s safe to say that, in every state, a Real Estate Broker is someone with more real estate education and experience than a real estate agent. To become one, you have to attend a certain number of Real Estate classes and pass the state exam. The duration of those classes is longer than the ones an agent goes through and the exam they take is more difficult to pass too. Summing up: although all Brokers can act also as Agents, not every Agent can act as a Broker.
In general, you could say that a Broker is the person with the certification necessary to list the property and sign the papers and overview the transaction between the home seller and the home buyer. But there is a large variety of other services he/she provides for home sellers and home buyers, like Comparative Market Analysis (CMA), preparing contracts and acting as the guardian of the escrow. Sometimes, the home seller or buyer doesn’t even meet the Broker, but a real estate agent that works under him/her.
The Broker is the one who collects the commission once the sale is made and he/she divides the value to all participating parts like the buyer’s agent and the seller’s agent – most of the times an employee of his, but, depending on the type of listing agreement (like an Open Listing) it can be someone independent from him/her.
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 ...

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