WV Real Estate common mistakes
WV Real Estate · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
On a 'seller wants to net $X after commission' problem, multiplying the net figure by the commission rate and adding it back, instead of dividing by (1 minus the total rate); the same error appears when commission is computed on net proceeds rather than gross price.
The drill from simple problems is price x rate = commission, so the candidate treats whatever number is in the prompt as the base. The net figure sits below 100% and cannot be the base.
What to do instead
Write the equation before touching the calculator: Sale price = desired net / (1 - total commission rate). Then back-check: take the rate off your answer and confirm the remainder equals the required net.
Answering that when one joint tenant deeds her interest to an outsider, the remaining joint tenants lose survivorship among themselves and the whole estate becomes a tenancy in common.
The rule 'a conveyance by one joint tenant severs the joint tenancy' is memorized as all-or-nothing, so it gets applied to the entire estate rather than only to the conveying co-tenant's share.
What to do instead
Redraw the fractions. The grantee takes the conveyor's undivided share as a tenant in common; the remaining joint tenants keep their own shares with survivorship intact as between them. Confirm the interests still total 100%.
Concluding that the buyer's agent owes fiduciary duties to the seller because the seller's proceeds fund the commission, or assuming a cooperating agent represents the buyer simply because they showed the property.
Compensation and representation get tangled because commission usually flows through the listing side, and showing a house feels like working for the buyer.
What to do instead
Determine agency from the written brokerage/agency agreement alone. Before answering any duty, disclosure, or confidentiality question, state aloud who is the client and who is the customer, and note that compensation never creates agency.
Treating a legal nonconforming use as a variance, or asserting that the use is lost when the property is sold or the current owner moves away.
Both involve a use that does not match current zoning, so the labels blur; candidates also assume the use is tied to a person rather than to the land.
What to do instead
Define each in one sentence: a variance is advance permission to depart from the ordinance because of hardship; a nonconforming use is an existing use that a later ordinance made non-compliant. Grandfathered status runs with the land and survives transfer, and is typically lost only by abandonment/discontinuance or destruction beyond the ordinance's threshold.
In the sales comparison approach, adjusting the subject's price, or adding value when the comparable is superior to the subject.
Two properties are in view and adjustments get done mechanically; the candidate forgets that the direction rule is 'adjust the comparable toward the subject.'
What to do instead
Before any arithmetic, say the direction in words: 'The comp has a garage the subject lacks, so the comp is superior; subtract.' Every adjustment must move the comparable's price toward what the subject would have brought.
Placing the borrower's car payment inside the housing expense ratio, or computing qualifying ratios on take-home pay instead of gross monthly income.
Both ratios use the same PITI number, so the buckets merge; take-home pay feels like the 'real' income.
What to do instead
Build two columns: housing = PITI (plus HOA if the lender counts it); total obligations = housing + all recurring monthly debt (auto, student, credit cards, co-signed loans). Both are computed on gross monthly income, and each debt appears in exactly one column.
Declaring a contract formed when the offeree signs the offer but alters a term such as price, closing date, or inclusions, and describing the altered response as an acceptance with a request.
The response looks like a signature on the original document and the change seems minor, so the mirror-image rule gets discounted.
What to do instead
Apply the mirror-image test literally: any change to a term, however small, is a counteroffer that also rejects the original offer. Ask 'are the terms identical?' If not, nobody is bound yet and the original offer cannot be revived except by the original offeror.
Stating that the federal lead-based paint disclosure applies to every home, or delivering the known-hazards disclosure while skipping the pamphlet and the signed acknowledgments.
The elements are memorized as a blur and the pre-1978 trigger gets dropped; a seller saying 'there's no lead paint' is treated as satisfying the whole obligation.
What to do instead
Recite the trigger and the four-part checklist: pre-1978 target housing only, then (1) disclosure of known LBP and hazards, (2) EPA pamphlet, (3) 10-day opportunity to inspect or test, waivable in writing, (4) signed acknowledgments, with the agent certifying compliance. Then check the narrow exemptions.
Classifying a built-in dishwasher, ceiling fan, wall-mounted shelving, or landscaping as personal property because neither party 'asked for it,' or letting a seller remove a fixture that the contract lists as an inclusion.
Candidates decide by who wants the item rather than by legal tests, and forget that in a dispute the written contract controls over their instinct.
What to do instead
Run the three fixture tests (method of annexation, adaptation to the property's use, intention of the parties) and then write the result into the inclusions/exclusions paragraph. Anything that could be argued about should be named explicitly either way.
Assuming West Virginia foreclosures are judicial mortgage foreclosures, or treating the state real property transfer excise tax as a flat percentage of price rather than a charge set per $500 of consideration.
National prep material drills mortgage foreclosure and generic percentage transfer taxes, while West Virginia practice runs on deeds of trust and a per-$500 tax base.
What to do instead
Anchor the West Virginia facts: the security instrument is ordinarily a deed of trust, enforced by nonjudicial trustee's sale after the required notice; and the excise tax is a fixed dollar amount per $500 of consideration (plus any county levy), so convert the price into $500 increments before multiplying. Confirm the current rate and who pays before exam day.