Emmer Group

Real estate can be a tricky thing. If you’ve ever heard agents, developers or anyone in the business talk about real estate, you can quickly observe that we’ve got essentially our own language that isn’t always easy to follow along with. When every clause has a name, every type of loan and deed is different and every spelling change means something different, it’s easy to get lost in the middle of a sentence. So, we decided we filled you in on a little vernacular that you may have heard, but may have heard but didn’t immediately understand. We’ll be doing a few of these, so let us know if you have any words you’d like decoded!

Real estate doesn't have to sound like a foreign language!

1) Quitclaim Deed: Like we said before, there are tons of different types of deeds, leases and agreements. This one in particular isn’t brought up all the time, so people often don’t know what it means.

What it means: Essentially, when an owner of real property transfers their interest to someone else, that’s called a quitclaim deed. There’s no title covenant, which means there’s no warranty on the property and that even the original owner had a clean title to begin with, so these aren’t usually used in standard seller-to-buyer deals.

Where you’d see it: You’d see this more often when passing property between family members or from private property into a business entity. You can also see this done when a couple divorces and either the husband or wife relinquishes all ownership to the marital house to the other spouse.

2) Sublet: This is actually more of a rental term, but with the amount of renting going on in the market, it’s rather handy to know what it means.

What it means: To sublet a property means that someone who is leasing a property decides to then lease the property again.

Where you’d see it: This is often the case if a management company is renting an apartment complex and then leases individual units to residents. Another way you often see this is when college students study abroad or leave for the summer and sublet their apartment when they’re gone.

3) Amortization: Sometimes in real estate, we have fancy sounding terms that are just there to cover the basics of common sense. This is one of those terms.

What it means: When you take out a mortgage and you make regular payments on it, you’re paying to make the original principal amount decrease and to cover the interest you’ve accrued. Amortization is the process in which that original principal goes down.

Where you’d see it: Oftentimes, you can see amortization tables that will demonstrate to you how your principal amount decreases over time.

Real estate can seem daunting, but with a little insider intel, you’ll be speaking like the pros in no time! We’ll do another word decoding in a couple weeks- any terms you’d like covered? If so, let us know, and we’ll explain them next time!

Originally Posted on 2/1/2012 on www.emmergroupblog.com:

For it being January, Mother Nature’s been treating Gainesville pretty kindly with this mild weather in the 70’s. And while we’re not complaining, it’s pretty obvious that we could take a little more time to be appreciative of the mild hurricane season, the bright sunshine and the amount of great sports weather we’ve had during our “winter” months thus far.

We at Emmer love to give back in thanks, and one way to do this is to recycle. While there’s a huge effort here in our lovely city to follow the green road, you’d be surprised how many people throw away things that could easily be reused or chuck un-recyclable things in the green bins. So, while you can find tons of sources on things you can recycle, we’re going to fill you in on some things you cannot.

1) Pizza Boxes: This may not be the biggest surprise for you, as it’s been going around for a while that the drippy cardboard can’t really be used again, but it’s the why that really matters here. Once recyclable products have been saturated with food stuffs, they become virtually useless and destined for the trash bin. This also includes products like juice boxes and aluminum foil, which is a big bummer.

2) Wet Paper Products: The minute you accidentally spill your soda on the newspaper, it’s time to hit the trash. Once the fibers have changed from the absorption of the liquid, you’ve lost all recyclability. This list also includes paper towels and tissues- so no trying to recycle during cold and flu season!

3) Bottle Caps: Yes, your water bottles can be recycled. However, only if you take off the lid of that bottle. That plastic has been used in a way where it’s now unusable and keeping it on the bottle adds more effort to the ones recycling. An exception? Dasani- they’ve made their entire bottles recyclable.

4) Plastic Bags: This one even threw us for a loop! Believe it or not, those plastic bags you get from the grocery store, the clothing store, and pretty much every other store ARE NOT recyclable, primarily because they take too much time to sort and can be dangerous to rummage through. Instead, you can often take them to “bag depositories” or back to the store you got them from!

We got a lot of our information from this great article on EcoSalon, which can fill you in on some other surprising things you can’t recycle. While this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to recycling your stuff, don’t be afraid to ask questions. If you’re interested in learning more about the process, check out all the details our fair city has to tell at the City of Gainesville’s Recycling Page or, if you’re an out-of-towner, find out more about your own cities options through Earth911.com. Either way, happy green-ifying!

What are your holiday traditions? We've got plenty, most involving the two big "F" 's: Family and Food!

As we all slowly recover from too many leftovers and the Black Friday brawls, it’s a good time to remember that the giving season is upon us and our holiday festivities are just beginning. With that in mind, we wanted to bring up one of our favorite parts of this holiday season, which happen to be traditions.

We were just reading on the South Florida Law Blog about Roy Oppenheim’s regular Thanksgiving “Turkey Stand Off” (a great article, if you haven’t read it!), as well as a list of some of the mostunusual holiday traditions, and it got us wondering: What really makes something a tradition? Is it the recurring nature or the value that the participants put into the event? Can you call something a tradition if it’s only happened a couple times? Why do we often feel that traditions “make or break” a holiday, when the holiday’s themselves are traditions?

Help us make a difference this year! It can be a new tradition!

In honor of the spirit of giving, we started a tradition not too long ago to participate in the Children’s Home Society of Florida’s “Angel Tree” Holiday Drive. People bring new, unwrapped gifts, like toys, clothes, books, etc., for children who are in situations keeping them from having a plentiful holiday. According to theirwebsite, the CHS of Florida “…delivers a unique spectrum of social services designed to protect children at risk of abuse, neglect or abandonment; to strengthen and stabilize families; to help young people break the cycle of abuse and neglect; and to find safe, loving homes for children. Every year, CHS helps to improve the lives of about 100,000 children and family members.” Their tradition became our tradition when we realized we could help change the lives of some children in need during the holidays. EDC and Gibraltar Title are collecting at our headquarters, our Sorrento and Capri clubhouses and at our two apartment complexes in Gainesville, Stoneridge and Tivoli, until December 15^th. If you’re in the area and care to join us in helping make a difference, we’d love for you to stop by and be a part of our tradition.

So, tell us: How do you define tradition? Do you have any, or are you more the “live-by-the-seat-of-your-pants” type? But, if you’re always spontaneous, is that, in itself, a tradition (okay, we know, we’re pushing it!)? In any case, we can all agree that the holidays bring a certain feeling of good will and cheer to the air that definitely makes this time of year merry. Hope you’re having a great start to the season!

What constitutes a tradition? Tell us your holiday traditions in the comments below!