What is the most efficient method of determining the fair market value of a home?
I have used our county’s assessment website. Unfortunately it seems that they have based the most recent values on whatever the house last sold for. I understand it is wise to look at what homes of sold for recently in the area, but that doesn’t seem very efficient.
Is there a sure fire, efficient, and fast way to deduce the value of a home???
Is there a sure fire, efficient, and fast way to deduce the value of a home????
Get an appraisal. Short of that it is going to require some work on someones part. You will need the sales prices of recent sales of similar sized homes in the immediate area. With today’s market conditions they will have to be fairly recent.
Is this where I hear I need to have an appraisor in my wallet? In these parts each appraisal goes for $400. Do appraisers build relationships and knock that price down?
I have an appraiser that will do what he calls a pencil appraisal where he basically looks at comps and does no leg work. I use that to seed out any houses that just won’t appraise and lets me know if I can do the 70% AFV or not. To actually do the deal it takes a formal $400 appraisal.
Ok…that helps. Gives me a revealing view on the appraiser. I figure the appraiser was investor friendly at one time and is now much more conservative. In Feb of 09 I was going to do a cashout refi on my primary, my appraiser went 214K but the bank said they also needed an appraiser who subsequently went 190K. This blew up my cashout chance because the bank went with their guy so I have been a bit befuddled about how the science of appraising is conducted.
Did you fall into your guy through reference or did you go through several appraisers before you settled on him?
Back a few years ago, many appraisers would find out how much the potential buyer was going to pay and then the appraisal would magically appear to be a few thousand over that amount so the buyer could secure the loan and everyone would be paid. Those new regulations were passed to hopefully make appraisals more independent. Not sure how well that’s going to work out.
Our appraisals are done by our banker in house for our investments. As long as he can justify the costs (which is easy by buying low), we get the money we need.