# BEDROOMS: How many bedrooms total are in the house. Bedrooms must have a closet, an escapable window, & a proper ingress & egress (a way in and a way out). Bedrooms must also be shown to be conforming or non-conforming in the “room size” area. Besides missing a closet or not meeting building codes for ingress/egress, non-conforming bedrooms are those in which someone could not escape from in case of a fire. They usually have no windows, windows that are too small, or windows that are too high up the wall for children to escape from.
# BATHROOMS: How many bathrooms total in the house. Each plumbing fixture counts as a ¼ in a bathroom. If it has a sink and toilet, it is a “half-bath.” If it has a sink, toilet, and shower, it is a “three-quarters bath.” If it has a sink, toilet, shower, & bathtub, it is a “full-bath.” If a bathroom is a full bathroom and has 2 sinks, it is actually called a “5-piece bathroom suite” instead of 1 ¼ bathroom.
GARAGE TYPE and GARAGE CAPACITY: A garage can be attached, detached, a basement garage, carport, parking spaces, or none. The capacity is based on how many vehicles can be parked in that garage. Sometimes people fill in garage dimensions if a garage is extra deep or extra tall for oversized vehicles.
YEAR BUILT and/or YEAR REMODELED: “Year Built” should be the date of the original building permit. If the house was remodeled, there should be appropriate building permits for that. A house can be updated without being remodeled if minor changes are made, such as new paint, appliances, flooring, etc.
AREA and/or SUBDIVISION: A house has a mailing address and/or street address which may tell you something about its location. When I search for property for someone, I don’t search for a specific address because it would take too long to check if every property was listed for sale. However, I can search by area in the MLS system or I can be more specific and search within a certain subdivision. Usually there are boundaries to the specific areas and you can find them at the Grand Junction Area Realtors Association map.
ELEMENTARY, MIDDLE, or HIGH School: If a buyer has children in the District 51 school system, they may want their children to stay in the same school as their current one. I can search by a specific school. They may also request a search within several elementary schools that are near to each other or a specific school that they feel is a better match for their children. You can find out which school your child will attend by going to the School District 51 schoolboundary website.
FRONTS: The front side of the house faces this direction. It can north, south, east, or west, or diagonal. Some people have preferences for houses to face south so the snow will melt off the driveway. Some people want the house to face west so they have a shady backyard in the evenings.PARCEL #: The parcel number mentioned at the Mesa County Assessor’s Office.
SELLER NAME: This must be the seller’s actual last name, not just the owner, so the person/s who legally own/s the property. Sometimes it just says "Owner" so the seller has some privacy.
SELLER LICENSED: If the seller is a real estate broker, he or she may have an unfair advantage when selling the property, so they must disclose to the potential buyer that they have a license to work in real estate.
TERMS: How the property can be purchased, such as with cash, a conventional loan, or an FHA or VA loan. Some properties that have been foreclosed are in such bad shape that they can only be purchased with cash. Also sometimes an owner will provide the financing to make it easier to buy the house, so it will say “owner carry.”
EM DEP and EM HOLDER: How much is required by the seller to show that a buyer is serious about purchasing the property. It is usually around 1 percent. The earnest money holder is the person who holds the deposit between making the office to buy and the closing. At the closing, the buyer’s earnest money counts towards the amount the buyer brings to the closing table.
TITLE CO: The title company is the one who is going to issue the title insurance on the property when it is transferred to the new owner. The seller pays for the insurance so that a “good title” can be given to the new buyer.
That's it for now. Let me know if you have questions about other things you have found on a listing or advertisement for a home.
