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!
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.
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!