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Rent to Own is simply as it says: a piece of property is rented to a person, and if the person completes the period of rent, the ownership of the piece of property is turned over to him or her.

Rent to own is applied differently in the Philippines, as living spaces can be leased under this type of agreement. Apartments are offered on a very long-term lease to qualified tenants, and if they complete the contract � 20-30 years or so - the deed for the apartment can be turned over to them, making them the owners of the property.

Cheonse / Jeonse is a means of leasing out apartments unique to South Korea. A tenant makes a lump-sum deposit on the rental space, valued at anywhere from 50-100% of the actual market value of the space.

The tenant then pays no rent for the duration of the contract, usually two or three years. At the end of the contract, the landlord returns the entire deposit to the tenant.

Cheonse is most often used during times of high interest rates. The landlord is free to use the deposit, as long as the same amount is returned to the tenant.

This term simply refers to a property that's being offered for sale at a lower price than what it should normally get, because the property needs a number of repairs to be restored to its best condition.

A house with a large floor area and significant improvements may still be called a fixer-upper if, for example, the house has been neglected or abandoned for several years, needing to be remodeled to be fit to live in again.

This allows the seller of a property to accept a buyer's offer for that property, which the seller continues to sell. If the seller gets another offer, he or she can also accept that offer, and then activate the clause by notifying the original buyer of the second offer.

The original buyer now has a specific period of time - which can be more or less than the stated 72 hours - to complete the requirements to buy the property. Failure to do so will mean the original buyer loses the property, and the second buyer can purchase it.

Because we're curious masochists, we decided to answer that question. But first we had to establish what constitutes a 'higher' commission. Higher than what? While traditionally the seller has offered the buyer's agent 3% of the final home price and reserved 3% for his own agent, the very existence of a standard commission has been hotly disputed. Again, some notes from the fray: Realtors from Canada to Florida insist that a standard commission doesn't exist, while professors from Berkeley and the Hudson Institute insist that it does.

Of course, Redfin's business model demonstrates that it's possible to charge different commissions. But Redfin has always been careful when listing a home to encourage our clients to offer the buyer's agent 3%, even while accepting a lower fee for ourselves. In this at least, we're like everybody else. We analyzed commissions paid to buyers' agents for all broker-listed residential homes sold in King County in 2007, and found that 79% paid commissions of exactly 3% to buyers' agents. Whether 79% adoption constitutes standard behavior or not, it is certainly common behavior.

The average commission, factoring in the lower and higher commissions as well, was 2.88%. The chart below (source: NWMLS) shows the average commission grouped by list price of the house. Most agents will tell you that the commission as a percent of the list price is lower for more expensive homes. We found this to be true: for list prices above $2 million, the average commission started getting closer to 2.5% than 3%.