Tip of the Week – Farms & Acreage or Residential Land?

Posted on July 30, 2012 by admin_ecar

So you have a land listing. What category do you put it in? There’s three possibilities: Commercial Sales using the Land property type, Residential Land, or Farms & Acreage. What do the MLS rules say? Unfortunately, nothing! Until now.

Commercial Land would be used if the property is zoned for commercial use. But what about the other two? Aside from a farm, which would obviously go under Farms & Acreage, what’s the difference between Residential Land and Acreage?

Thanks to our good friends on the MLS committee, now we know. Definitions for Farms & Acreage and Residential Land were created for Appendix A of the ECAR MLS rules.

And it wasn’t as easy as it sounds like it could have been. Defining a property type depends on how you see that property type. So after several minutes of debate during a regular meeting, the decision was made to form a task force. A group of Realtors who regularly list land properties in several areas got together to create these definitions. Even then, it took a good bit of time to come to an agreement.

So  here’s the definitions that were put together.

Residential Land: Vacant Land less than 10 acres.

Farms & Acreage: Any property 10 acres or more.

Detached Single Family: Improved property less than 10 acres where all permanent structures on the land are on one or more deeds.

Notice the last one? So it’s not just land that got a definition. There was already a basic definition for Detached Single Family. But in light of the new definitions for land, the description for DSF needed to updated as well.

The MLS rules will be updated soon with this change and a few others. Watch the MLS Announcements, the ECAR Buzz, and the Tip of the Week for more updates.

If you have any questions, please call us at 850-244-2411, or email susan@ecaor.com.

Susan Beck, MLS Director
Emerald Coast Association of REALTORS
Fort Walton Beach, FL