Listing descriptions that you read, whether on Realtor.ca or sent to you by your agent, can often be confusing. Plenty of times the description is riddled with acronyms. Often agents aren’t even sure what they mean at first glance. That may be because we’re pretty sure agents just make them up some times when trying to save room. Sometimes they don’t even end up being acronyms, they’re just deleting vowels in a word to save space.
Each time someone writes a description they have limited space to do so with a character limit per post. So that’s forced “creativity” in the descriptions. This practice mainly started back before Realtor.ca and only agents for the most part would see MLS description. So they were written for other agents assuming they would be the target audience.
With Realtor.ca now the target audience has, to a degree, switched. The people reading it now are like you, the general public. You do not spend nearly as much time as agents reading and interpreting many of the descriptions. You can’t be expected to know what all the acronyms are.
One of the common ones you see that I get asked a lot about is ELF. Seen often as saying that all the ELFs are included or excluded. This isn’t Harry Potter, we don’t have magical house elf’s for everybody. It actually stands for “Electric Light Fixtures”. That’s right, all the light fixtures are included.
While technically this may be a little redundant as all fixtures are generally included in the sale of a home unless stated otherwise, its better to be clear. Few things are more disappointing in this process than a buyer coming into a home after they paid for it, expecting something to be there, only to find it has been removed by the seller.
So next time you are reading a description and see an acronym you aren’t familiar with, just ask!
What acronyms have you seen but not been sure what they meant?
