Sales Associate
A licensed real estate salesperson or broker who is employed by and works on behalf of a real estate broker.

Sales Contract
An agreement by which the buyer and seller agree to the terms and conditions of a sale.

Sales Price
The actual price agreed to by the purchaser and seller. Also referred to as gross price, the sales price is generally more than the seller actually receives since both the sales commission and all the seller’s closing costs are subtracted before determining the net sales price realized by the seller.

Salesperson
A person licensed by a state real estate commission to perform on behalf of any licensed real estate broker any act or acts authorized to be performed by the broker. This is the person often carelessly or casually referred to as an agent.

Secondary Mortgage Market
The means by which existing first mortgages are bought and sold. The secondary mortgage market provides a lender with an opportunity to sell a loan before its maturity date. The availability of funds for financing real estate is affected by economic conditions both local and national.

Securitization
The pooling of mortgage loans into a mortgage-backed security. The principal and interest payments from the individual mortgages are paid out to the holders of the MBS security.

Security Deposit
A sum of money held by a landlord from a tenant for the purpose of securing the performance of the terms of the lease by the tenant for such things as the payment of rent and repair of damages caused by the tenant.

Setback Requirement(s)
The distance, normally measured in feet, back from the street or property line upon which no permanent improvements such as a building can be met. Setback requirements may be publicly imposed through zoning ordinances or privately imposed through deed restrictions or covenants.

Site
The location or place of a plot of ground set aside for a particular type of land use.

Spec House
A home either currently under construction or one finished by a builder in which a Purchaser has yet to be found.

Survey
The process by which the precise physical boundaries of a parcel of land are measured. Legal descriptions appear in listing agreements, sales contracts, deeds, mortgages, notes, and other instruments involving rights and interests in real estate. When land is conveyed from one party to another, the instrument of conveyance needs to contain a legally sufficient description of the parcel. Courts have interpreted this to mean that property is sufficiently described if a competent civil engineer or surveyor could locate the subject property given the land description.