Place

A glossary of housing and transaction terms

Plain definitions of the words used across this primer. Terminology differs between jurisdictions; where it does, the underlying idea is described rather than the local label.

Figure-ground plan: an index block of letter tabs stamped against ruled definition lines

A

Achieved price: The price at which a sale legally completed, as distinct from the asking price or the price agreed. The only figure describing a real event.
Affordability test: A lender's assessment of whether a household could sustain the payments, including at a rate substantially higher than the one offered.
Amortisation: The gradual repayment of a loan's principal through instalments that also cover interest, so the balance falls slowly at first and faster later.
Asking price: The figure at which a property is marketed. An opening position chosen by the seller, not a measurement of value.

B

Boundary: The line dividing two parcels of land. Usually shown only in general terms on registered plans, and often not the same question as who maintains the fence.
Building line: The common distance at which buildings on a street sit back from it. A consistent line indicates planned development.
Building survey: The most detailed common level of independent inspection, covering construction and condition including likely causes and consequences of defects.

C

Chain: A sequence of dependent transactions, each conditional on the one beneath it, which must all complete together.
Completion: The point at which money moves, ownership transfers and possession changes hands.
Condensation: Moisture forming where warm humid air meets cold surfaces. The most common cause of damp, and a heating and ventilation problem rather than a structural one.
Covenant: A promise attached to land restricting or requiring something, binding on later owners of that land.

E

Easement: A right attached to one parcel of land and exercisable over another, such as a right of way or a right to run a drain.
Equity: The value of a property less the debt secured on it. Rises as the loan is repaid and as value rises; falls when value falls.
Exchange: The binding step at which a provisional agreement becomes an enforceable contract with a fixed completion date.

F

Fixed rate: An interest rate held constant for a stated period, after which the loan reverts to another arrangement unless renewed.
Flow: The dwellings actually offered and traded in a period, as opposed to the total stock that exists.
Frontage: The width of a plot where it meets the street. The strongest single clue to what a street was built for.

G

Grain: How finely land is divided into plots. Fine grain means many small plots; coarse grain means few large ones.
Ground rent: A periodic sum payable under a lease for the land, separate from any service charge, and significant where it escalates.

L

Leasehold: Ownership of a time-limited interest rather than of the land outright. A wasting asset whose value falls as the term shortens.
Loan-to-value: The loan expressed as a percentage of the property's value. The main determinant of the rate offered.
Local authority search: A set of questions put to the local authority about recorded planning, building control, road status and charges affecting a property.

N

Negative equity: Owing more on a property than it is worth. Possible without any default, and constraining only if you need to sell or refinance.

P

Party wall: A wall shared between two properties, where work by one owner affects the other and is usually subject to a formal procedure.
Permeability: How many routes there are through an area on foot. High in older grids, deliberately low in cul-de-sac layouts.
Principal: The amount borrowed and still outstanding, as distinct from the interest charged on it.

R

Rising damp: Moisture drawn upward from the ground where a barrier is absent, bridged or damaged. Less common than it is diagnosed.
Remortgage: Replacing one loan with another on the same property, usually to leave a reverting rate. Requires a fresh assessment.

S

Searches: Questions put to bodies holding records about a property and its surroundings. They report the record and cannot report the unrecorded.
Service charge: The contribution payable toward maintaining the shared parts of a building. Its history is the best guide to a building's upkeep.
Stock: The total number of dwellings that exist in an area. Changes by a fraction of a per cent a year.
Subsidence: Downward movement of the ground beneath a foundation. Frequently resolved by removing its cause rather than by underpinning.
Submarket: A group of dwellings within an area that trades semi-independently of the rest, with its own buyers and its own sensitivities.

T

Tenure: The terms on which land or a dwelling is held. Determines value, lendability and who controls decisions about the building.
Term: The period over which a loan is scheduled to be repaid, or the remaining duration of a lease.
Title: The bundle of rights and obligations constituting ownership of a parcel of land, together with the record evidencing it.
Transaction cost: Everything paid to move that is not the price. Incurred on the way in and again on the way out.

V

Valuation: An assessment of what a property is worth. A lender's valuation serves the lender and is not a condition survey.
Variable rate: An interest rate that moves, either at the lender's discretion or in step with a reference rate.

How to use these definitions

Housing vocabulary is unusually local. The same idea travels under different names between countries and sometimes between regions, and occasionally the same word means materially different things in two places. The definitions below describe the underlying mechanism rather than any single jurisdiction's terminology, so that the concept remains recognisable even where the label differs.

Where a term is used in a specific document that applies to you, that document's own definition governs. Nothing here describes any particular property, loan, lease or legal situation.