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Real Estate Appraisals

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cbrsurfr said:
And zillow is a joke. The house next to me is the same model as mine but MINE has a finished basement, 3 car garage, and a fireplace. My house is shown as worth $215K - the other house $260K. Same square footage, mine just has more upgrades.
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A lot of their info is just pulled from the local assessors office and sale history.

Why not check with your local assessors office on the value of both of your places.. maybe you need to complain to them that you are not paying your fair share of property taxes 😛
 
I need to become an appraiser. All you do is look up the asking price of the house and walla you have your appraisal. Its a big scam. They dont give two shits. No skin is in the game for them.
 
Was in a very similar situation last year when we sold our home. Ended up having to lower the sales price to the appraised value even though we had multiple bids higher because we could not get the appraiser to budge.

I think that appraisers have become very conservative with appraisals simply due to the huge backlash against the industry after the housing crash in 2008.
 
TheSlamma said:
A lot of their info is just pulled from the local assessors office and sale history.

Why not check with your local assessors office on the value of both of your places.. maybe you need to complain to them that you are not paying your fair share of property taxes 😛
Click to expand...

Other house sold on 5/12/12 for 214.5K, mine 7/25/12 for 225K. There is no reason why my zillow is so low compared to the other house. Hmm...maybe my taxes should be based on my zillow value, in that case I LOVE zillow. Assessed value is 273K.
 
I had the same thing happen to me. Basically what I was told is that upgrades are for your pleasure only and they don't matter. I learned that they appraise houses on sq-ft basis. They find houses that sold in the area divide the price by sq-ft than they multiply that by your sq-ft and this is what you get they might add a few grand for finished basement etc but not much.
So if a tear down sells in your area you are screwed.
 
OlafSicky said:
I had the same thing happen to me. Basically what I was told is that upgrades are for your pleasure only and they don't matter. I learned that they appraise houses on sq-ft basis. They find houses that sold in the area divide the price by sq-ft than they multiply that by your sq-ft and this is what you get they might add a few grand for finished basement etc but not much.
So if a tear down sells in your area you are screwed.
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I don't understand how anyone can think that this makes logical sense. If I'm looking at two houses that are next door to each other that are the same exact model and one needs a kitchen upgrade and the other doesn't, there has to be a VALUE difference. The same thing should go for large maintenance items. If one house has a 20 year old roof and the other a brand new one, there needs to be some value add (or subtraction maybe) based on that.
 
Drekce said:
I don't understand how anyone can think that this makes logical sense. If I'm looking at two houses that are next door to each other that are the same exact model and one needs a kitchen upgrade and the other doesn't, there has to be a VALUE difference. The same thing should go for large maintenance items. If one house has a 20 year old roof and the other a brand new one, there needs to be some value add (or subtraction maybe) based on that.
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I didn't get it either but this is what I have been told and it looks like it's true. When you are buying a house agents tell you about the "upgrades" but when you are selling it doesn't matter.
I have a friend who is selling his house now. A elderly neighbor went into a home and his family was selling his house. It hasn't been touched since it was build in 1960. My friend spend thousands renovating his house has a much larger lot. The house is basically brand new including drywall and insulation in the walls because the houses were build without. The neighbor sold his in 3 weeks and he can't sell his house for just 40K more. The people that bought it will have to spend $150K to bring it up to my friends level explain that one🙄. But the price they payed was the same price another hose down the street sold for after another old fart died about 3 months before. It was a complete tear down.
 
OlafSicky said:
I didn't get it either but this is what I have been told and it looks like it's true. When you are buying a house agents tell you about the "upgrades" but when you are selling it doesn't matter.
I have a friend who is selling his house now. A elderly neighbor went into a home and his family was selling his house. It hasn't been touched since it was build in 1960. My friend spend thousands renovating his house has a much larger lot. The house is basically brand new including drywall and insulation in the walls because the houses were build without. The neighbor sold his in 3 weeks and he can't sell his house for just 40K more. The people that bought it will have to spend $150K to bring it up to my friends level explain that one🙄. But the price they payed was the same price another hose down the street sold for after another old fart died about 3 months before. It was a complete tear down.
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That may be the way that it works right now, but it makes absolutely no sense. Something has to change, and it starts and ends with the appraisers.
 
An appraiser I talked to told me that he loves working now. He said that they pull sale records and property tax evaluations and that is it. With Google Street view they just look at the street , less work for him.
 
cbrsurfr said:
Other house sold on 5/12/12 for 214.5K, mine 7/25/12 for 225K. There is no reason why my zillow is so low compared to the other house. Hmm...maybe my taxes should be based on my zillow value, in that case I LOVE zillow. Assessed value is 273K.
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Guess you are right.. they individually go around and find some person to screw with.. in this case they picked you out of all the houses. No way they would pull that data from an already established source that would be too much work.
 
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