Category: Online Classroom Help

Real Estate License Math NW1/4 of the SE 1/4 of section

Difficult Real Estate License Math for your WV Real Estate License

When you’re dealing with difficult real estate license math that we need to get your WV real estate license look no further than the best school for your West Virginia Real Estate License to explain. Honestly, I post these after students request an explanation. Hopefully you can see that enrolling at Spruce School of Real Estate is as valuable as you have heard. We care that much, and we work hard to keep proving that. So, the question handed out was yet again on sections, so let’s go over some background of what we possibly know so we can weed down the difficult portions and leave the easy.

Sections are 640 square acres. How did I know that? Well I could’ve memorized it or I could use some things we should know already. Let me show you how we can know it with just the few memorized numbers we already know. We know that a section is 1 linear mile across AND DOWN correct? We also know that a linear mile is 5,280 feet because of our memory tips in our lovely WV Real Estate Online Class that you registered for.

Ok, so the next step. We know how to calculate square footage which is length times width.  That means 5,280 x 5,280 is 27,878,400 and that means that that all sections are 27,878,400 square feet. Yes ALL of them 😉

Now we also know that a square acre is 43,560 feet because of our study tips in class. So if we divide 27,878,400 by 43,560 we get 640. So that means that ALL sections are 640 acres in total. Yes, ALL of them.

Now You See Why a Section is 640 Acres?

So that’s how I knew a section represented 640 acres.  OK so lets see what we can do with that number. Sections can be divided into halves (320 acres) and quarters (160 acres). So that’s the easy part. Then it has to get more confusing because EACH of those portions can then be divided again into halves and quarters. But its not terribly hard…. Its basic math. 40 acres here, 40 acres here, 40 acres here, 40 acres here. Do you see the logic? Good!Sections explained by WV Real Estate School

Now, there a reason I went into all this BEFORE I broke down the super confusing question. And that’s because the super confusing question doesn’t have to be that confusing question IF WE KNOW WHAT I JUST STATED.  In the end the question wants us to know how many acres. They give us a bunch of gibberish in there but the reality is they want you to calculate an acreage amount by the price per acre and tell them what that total price was.

So lets look at the question and tear it apart. Let’s make this real estate license math make sense!

If a farm described as “the NW 1/4 of the SE 1/4 of section 10, Township 2 North, Range 3 West of the 6th P.M.”

It reads, If a farm described as “the NW 1/4 of the SE 1/4 of section 10, Township 2 North, Range 3 West of the 6th P.M.” sold for $4,500 an acre, what was the total sales price?

Ok, so lets think about this? They want to know the NW 1/4 of the SE 1/4 . Lets place that on our sections grid to illustrate it. North, south, east, west to help us think it through. We start with the south east quarter so that here. And then they want the north west quarter of THAT, so that’s here.

Now you wanna know something that is crazy? We didn’t even need to map that out. I did because it makes more sense to explain the real estate license math IF we map it out but ALL we needed to know here was that they wanted to know a quarter of a quarter size… Does this look familiar from earlier in the video? Good 😊

So You See the Size is 40 Acres

And guess what? A quarter of a quarter of a section. will ALWAYS BE 40 acres. It doesn’t matter if it said it wanted the SE ¼ of the NW ¼ or the NE ¼ of the SW ¼, or any of that gibberish because all sections are divided up like this and they’re ALL a liner mile up and down, and they’re always gonna be a fixed size.

It also doesn’t matter if the question read:

A farm on Planet Neptune described as “the NW ¼ of the SE ¼ of section 40, Township 20, of the eastern coast of the Bahamas, past the 400th Meridian to the southern lake” BECAUSE IN THE END THEY JUST WANTED TO KNOW THE NUMBER OF ACRES IN A QUARTER OF A QUARTER OF A SECTION. Real Estate License Math Sections

Basically everything AFTER the description of “NW ¼ of the SE ¼” is totally irrelevant to the size of the acreage we need. We KNOW the size is 40 acres and then just do basic math here. 40 acres times $4,500 is $180,000

Now why did I go over all these steps to show you this? I did it so you can plug in a wide variety of numbers, prices, and scenarios , like they might throw at you at the national testing center and you can still get an answer, regardless of them changing details. Knowing these steps can allow you to answer a wide variety of real estate license math that is dealing with sections and land descriptions now.

By the way, you CAN enroll now to take Spruce’s online real estate classes by visiting https://www.spruceschoolofrealestate.com and clicking “enroll now” It’s THAT easy. You’ll then have access to the instructor for your real estate education needs all the time during your enrollment!

Real Estate Math Walk-Through Part 1 to help you get that WV Real Estate License

There are a few real estate math topics in your real estate license textbook that are very hard to make sense of

At Spruce School of Real Estate we have forums dedicated to JUST explaining real estate math and the instructor takes requests for more! Here’s a taste of what we produce to show you how we can take a math concept that’s seemingly impossible and by the end of the walk-through I’m fairly certain it will make sense. Spruce is all about high quality, clear explanations, of otherwise difficult real estate exam content. No gimmicks, just clear, concise real estate classes that anyone can understand.

Ok, so the question reads

How many acres are contained in the tract described as “beginning at the NW corner of the SW 1/4, then south along the west line to the SW corner of the section, then east along the south line of the section 2,640 feet, more or less, to the SE corner of the said SW 1/4, then in a straight line to the POB”?

And the answers they give are

  1. 80 acres
  2. 90 acres
  3. 100 acres
  4. 160 acres

First thoughts of mine are “are they trying to kill me with this!?”

But in reality this question really is quizzing us on what we understand about a section… in a LOT of detail. And believe it or not you DO actually know how to do this once we decipher their wording.

Spruce can help

You know a section is a square mile correct? Yes. So it’s a mile up and down, and a mile, left and right… which creates a square mile. You know that a linear mile is 5,280 feet (because you listened to me in class and you have the memory tip for that from your online real estate license class) … so one way it is 5,280 feet and the other way it is ALSO 5,280 feet. So, lets draw that out

When we draw it out we can basically just draw a square. We know that each side is 5,280 feet long. Now the confusing thing about the square isn’t that terribly confusing as long as you know north south east and west. The square is first divided into those portions.

The top right is North East ¼

The bottom right is south east ¼

The top left is North West ¼

And the bottom left is South West ¼

Say it in English!

Looking at the question we can pull from the cryptic wording that they’re interested in the South West portion so let’s make this easier now that we know WHERE the SW portion is and ONLY work within that area.

Now that we’re working JUST in that area we can now break THAT square up into regions using the same logic of north, south, east and west… so let’s draw that out to help illustrate it in your mind

We’ll start with the NW ¼

… and you see how the North West Quarter of the South West Quarter now makes sense and doesn’t make you cry? Yes, me too 😊. SO lets run with that and we’ll add the other three. We now can easily add the North East Quarter of the South West Quarter. Now the South West Quarter of the South West Quarter. And lastly the South East Quarter of the South West Quarter.

NOW, let’s look at the question and sort out where they want this “map” to happen. They say they want the map to begin at “NW corner of the SW ¼” sooooooo, we’re working IN the SW ¼ and we want to put a marker in the NW CORNER.

Then the question states to “go south along the west line to the SW corner of the section”. So where’s the SW corner of this section? It’s simply the bottom left. So, lets place another marker there. Now for point 3 it says to “go east along the south line of the section 2,640 feet, more or less, to the SE corner of the said SW 1/4,”

Huh?

Now, 90% of that is cryptic gibberish because we KNOW that a section is 5,280 feet long (in its entirety) and they want us to go HALF that at 2,640 feet to the right (seeing that they want us to go east… SOOOOO, place a marker half way across the section (which is 2,640 feet and places the marker here).

It’s a Triangle, it’s Connect the Dots! Do NOT Fear!

Now they say “in a straight line” go back to the point of beginning… which is easy… ITS CONNECT THE DOTS!!!! Let’s connect the remaining dots and this is the area they actually want to know how many acres it is!

So, why has FEAR all of a sudden crept into your brain? Because it’s a TRIANGLE BILLY!!!! But honestly this triangle thing is worth noting because I’ve heard of people seeing more and more on PSI (the testing facility that administers your WV Real Estate Exam) where they want you to calculate square footage within a triangle. So, let’s calm your fears

What is a triangle? Its half a square, is it not? Yes, and can you calculate square footage of a square? Yes, you can, so you can actually calculate the square footage of a triangle (half of a square) by simply calculating the square footage like it WAS A SQUARE and then dividing that in half! Wham, brain explosion stopped.

Real Estate Math Clearly Explained

So, using our memory tips

We know that the linear feet of the section is a mile, 5,280 feet… Look at the grid… are we using the whole mile? No, we’re using HALF OF IT so we are using 2,640 feet in the math and now doing what I just said above we can calculate the square footage like we would with a square but then divide that in two to get the triangles square footage sooooo

2,640 x 2,640 = 6,969,600 square feet (IF it was a square)

But it’s a triangle , which we know is half of a square, so divide by two

6,969,600/2= 3, 484,800

And we now know that THAT triangle has 3,484,800 square feet in it. BUT GEEEESH, WHAT DO WE DO WITH THAT NUMBER!!!! Well, we need one very important memory number. Remember the 43,560 memory tip, which is the square feet in an acre…. REMEMBER? Sure you do… Well that’s how many square feet are in ONE acre… so we can use that to figure this out

We have 3,484,800 square feet in our triangle so let’s take that number and divide it by 43,560

3,484,800/43,560

WAAAAAAAL AAAAAAA we get 80

There are 80 acres in that triangle.

What Did We Really Need to Know?

…to answer that super messed up hard question?

  • We needed to know what a section was in a very deep way.
  • We needed to remember our memory numbers 5280 and 43560 (which like in the course I stressed were very important for a multitude of application)
  • We needed to know the basics of a compass (N,S, E, and W)
Compass
A section can be broken down into the basics of a compasses direction.

Now I realize the wording of that was a BEAST but isn’t it amazing what we DO know, if we can just apply it? If you’re considering getting a WV real estate license look no further than Spruce School of Real Estate. We are as professional as the national corporations BUT with the added benefit of it being a small business, able to be there for you, answer questions when you need, without waiting on hold. Spruce School of Real Estate has offered pre-licensing courses so you can get your WV Real Estate License for 28 years now! No Gimmicks, just clear explanation and presentation. Whether it’s real estate math or real estate terms Spruce is the absolute best online real estate class in all 50 states, offered to you in WV simply because we live here! Sign up now by clicking the “sign up button” https://sprucerealestateschool.com/index.html