A balloon mortgage is a type of mortgage that after a certain period of time comes due before you would typically pay it off. For instance, you may get a loan that’s amortized every 30 years but has a five-year balloon. After the five years, the entire amount remaining on the loan is due and payable to the mortgagee.

When you purchase real estate with financing, you sign a note and a mortgage. A note is what obligates you to repay the debt. A mortgage is what puts the property up as collateral for that debt. A foreclosure is when the lender is seeking to sell the collateral because the borrower is not making their monthly payments. It is important to consult with an experienced real estate attorney if you’re served with a foreclosure because you could lose the property.

A letter of intent is something that takes place between a buyer and seller prior to writing a contract. It essentially has the buyer and seller agree on the big-ticket items before the attorneys get together to actually write the contract. It’s very common in commercial real estate to start with a letter of intent before you actually move on to the purchase contract.

A quitclaim deed is a type of deed in Florida that provides no warranties. The person signing the quitclaim deed is essentially giving you what they have if they have anything. If they have nothing, you receive nothing. If they have the entire title to the house, you receive the entire title to the house. This deed is often used to cure title defects, for instance, and also in situations where in a divorce one spouse is giving up their interest to the other spouse.

In the state of Florida, if you’ve owned a home less than three years, and you receive title insurance at the time of closing, you may be eligible for a reissue credit, which is about a 40% discount on what title insurance typically costs. In addition, any time you refinance a property and you have a title insurance policy already in place, you’re eligible for the reissue credit.

A short sale essentially is when the lender agrees to take less than what is owed on the mortgage. This became a common occurrence, unfortunately, when the real estate market crashed in 2008, 2009. People often owed far more than her homes were worth. Instead of foreclosing on all these homes, sometimes a bank will agree to do a short sale, which is to take less than what is owed.

A survey gives you a visual representation of your property lines and boundaries of the property. It will show if there are any structures on the property, where those structures are located in terms of your boundary lines, so you can assess if the neighbor’s fence is on your property or if an improvement on your property is encroaching onto a neighbor’s property. You will need a survey if you’re going to obtain title insurance so they can insure the title against easements and encroachments because those items cannot be discovered without performing a survey.

A Time is of the Essence Clause in a contract means that the time periods are important in the contract. Any contract that has a Time is of the Essence Clause, a judge or court is going to enforce the time periods strictly whereas if that clause is absent, if someone misses a deadline or a closing by a few days, a court may say that that’s de minimis or not a big deal.

In Florida when you transfer real estate there’s typically a documentary stamp tax on the deed. Since we don’t have an income tax in the state of Florida the state’s got to make their money somewhere. So in Florida the transfer tax is 70 cents per hundred dollars of consideration paid.

Some of the key provisions in a real estate purchase contract are, of course, the purchase price, the closing date, a financing contingency, an inspection contingency, but there’s also a lot of smaller, little-known clauses that are important to the transaction. It’s very important to retain the services of an experienced real estate attorney to review the contract if you have any questions.