Absentee Owner: Absentee (Mail And Site):
An individual who owns a piece of real estate but does not live in it.
Absentee Owner: Owner Occupied:
An individual who owns a piece of real estate and lives in it.
Absentee Owner: Situs From Sale (occupied):
Situs is a term used by the assessor's office to indicate the site location of the property.
APN:
Also known as the parcel number.
Assessor:
An official who evaluates property for taxation.
Certificate of Occupancy:
A document issued by a local government agency or building department certifying a building's compliance with applicable building codes and other laws, and indicating it to be in a condition suitable for occupancy.
Deed:
Documentation that transfers ownership of real estate. It contains the names of the old and new owners and a legal description of the property, and is signed by the person transferring the property.
Easement:
A right to cross or otherwise use someone else's land for a specified purpose.
Escrow:
When money is deposited by one person with a neutral third party so that it can be delivered to another party upon completion of an event. In the home-buying process, escrow opens when the buyer and seller sign a purchase agreement and the buyer puts down a deposit.
Estimated Value:
We use a sophisticated algorithm to determine a property’s value where valuation data from a variety of sources is weighted for accuracy, benchmarked, and combined.
These are the pieces of information we use:
County assessment records
Calculated values from industry data providers
Market value records from contemporary sources
Recently sold for prices on comparables
Synthetic data compiled from our thousands of records
Executor:
An executor is a legal term referring to a person named by the maker of a will or nominated by the testator to carry out the instructions of the will.
Foreclosure:
The action of taking possession of a mortgaged property when the mortgagor fails to keep up their mortgage payments.
GIS Map:
GIS (geographic information systems) mapping helps you understand a particular area. It is designed to efficiently capture, store, update, manipulate, analyze, and display all forms of geographically referenced information.
Grantee:
The grantee is the party that receives the property during a sale.
Grantor:
The grantor is a person or legal entity, such as a business, transferring property ownership to another person or entity on a deed. The grantor is usually the current property owner.
HUD Home:
When a government-insured loan (FHA) gets foreclosed and the Federal Housing and Urban Development pays the defaulted loan off, and then puts the home on the market.
Improvement:
A building is considered an ‘improvement’ on land.
Lien Document:
A right to keep possession of property belonging to another person until a debt owed by that person is discharged.
Lot Size:
The area owned as defined by the property’s legal description.
Legal Property Description:
A way to define or accurately pinpoint where a particular piece of property is located.
Parcel Number:
Also known as APN, is a number assigned to parcels of real property by the tax assessor of a particular jurisdiction for purposes of identification and record-keeping.
Plat:
A map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land.
Property or Boundary Lines:
The defined points where one person's land ends and the neighbouring lands begin.
Title:
A bundle of rights in which a party may own either a legal interest or equitable interest in a piece of property. The rights in the bundle may be separated and held by different parties. It may also refer to a formal document, such as a deed, that serves as evidence of ownership.
Zoning:
Municipal or local government laws that dictate how real property can and cannot be used in certain areas. Zoning laws limit commercial use of land in order to prevent oil, manufacturing or other types of businesses from building in residential neighbourhoods.