Appendix E: Glossary of Key Terms

Your checklist

• ☐ Decision quality: The soundness of the process, framing, evidence, alignment, recording, independent of the outcome.
• ☐ Decision record: The written account of what was decided, why, on what evidence, and by whom.
• ☐ Five-attribute stakeholder map: A grid documenting each stakeholder's objectives, concerns, incentives, influence level, and decision authority.
• ☐ Four stakeholder categories: A quick classification of participants as financial, emotional, operational, or governance stakeholders, each with a signature question.
• ☐ Housing Decision Governance: The discipline of making house decisions with framing, evidence, transparency, and documentation.
• ☐ Independent review: A check by someone with no stake in the outcome, whose value is in challenge, not validation.
• ☐ Influence versus authority: Influence is sway over the group; authority is the legal power to bind the decision. The two often diverge.
• ☐ Net proceeds: The cash actually received after every cost of a sale, the only figure comparable across paths.
• ☐ Net realizable equity: Home value minus loans minus the cost of accessing the equity. The spendable figure.
• ☐ 1031 exchange: A tax-deferred swap into another investment property, relevant to landlord exits.
• ☐ Stepped-up basis: The reset of an inherited asset's tax basis to its value at death.
• ☐ Certainty premium: The amount a seller pays, in reduced price, for the speed and certainty of a cash sale.