Guitar Gear Forum

yeah they used 2 different appraisers to come up with their number and what's messed up about it is that the appraisal does NOT include the basement area, office and spare bathroom that's on the lower level. It makes ZERO sense because it's a big chunk of the house (roughly 700 of the 3000 sq ft listed on the tax records) and what is even more messed up is that not too long ago, the owners re-financed and that DID include the basement in the value of the home so that re-fi loan apparently screwed them over hard in that regard.

Our lender did say that he thinks the house is easily worth our negotiated contract price but unfortunately, the way the appraisal works, the bank cannot place that value on it.

Wife also said that the other buyers that made an offer on the house the same time as us have a cash offer. Whether or not they are willing to pay more for the house than what it's appraisal value is is yet to be seen but I told my wife all we can do is offer the sellers the appraisal value, ignore the $3000 for home repairs and see if they'll accept that because both me and the wife absolutely refuse to spend that much more money on the house and be instantly upside down on our loan from day 1.

Yeah it's a great house, yeah we really like it, but at the end of the day, we're going to ultimately make a decision with our brains instead of our emotions.

the dude who appraised my home asked me what i was paying and miraculously came up with a value of 500 dollars more. he then dinged me for a loose board on the back patio steps so he could charge another trip fee after i took 3 seconds to nail it in place. fha loans/appraisers ftl.


best thing you can do is take your emotions out like you said. its a real sweet house, i am sure you would be happy but you would also kick yourself if you let your heart force you to overpay. there are lots of sweet homes out there, keep us posted and best of luck!!

So I talked to my old man and he agrees that dropping the $3000 we had agreed on for home repairs and just offering them appraisal value would be the best first step.

if they balk and say no way in hell then we just walk away and find something else but if we can negotiate a little with them, he thinks it may be worth paying an extra bit (he says up to an extra $7000) to get the house but that also assumes that we live in the place more than 5 years because if not, we'd get hosed trying to sell it.

We'll see what happens. At first he suggested trying to find out who appraised it originally when the owners did their refinance that would include the finished basement and try to have a second assessment made. That would potentially get the appraised value up to around contract price but would also open up the possibilty that when we turned around to sell it down the road, once again, it appraises for much less due to basement exclusion and that would put us at in a hole and I do not want to be in that position.

I already got screwed once by the market and got stuck with a house worth much less than what I paid for it but I'm not going to willingly walk into that situation again.

Update:

Ok so everything is officially moved into the house now and we're slowly but surely getting everything organized. Our main bed hasn't shown up yet but the mattress has so we've got that laying on a frame and some boards for the time being. Feels like we're laying on the floor.

The contractor that's doing all the work on our house re-painting and minor repairs is going to be out of pocket for 2 weeks due to his son about to be deployed overseas. He's done all the painting EXCEPT for my studio so I'm going to have to wait 2 more weeks before I can get all that stuff set back up.

The house though even with all the boxes and stuff is SOO much bigger than our old house. There are 2 rooms completely empty except for a bed and in the kitchen, we were having to try and come up with stuff to put into cabinets we had so much extra room in them.

So at this point, we're still basically just unpacking stuff and trying to figure out where everything is going to go and how we want things arranged. Home theater is setup so that's the most important thing

Probably the worst thing right now is that there is an obscene amount of dust in the house. there's no carpet anywhere to trap the dust so we had to go through with the vacuum to get all the dust off the floor but it's the dust we CANT see that's sucking. It's all in the duct work. I pulled a vent off in the den and there was so much dust in the 5 feet worth of ducting that I could get to with the vacuum that it filled up the canister to the top... and there are these vents all over the place not to mention all the dust that I can only assume is in the duct work that I can't get to with the vacuum

our plan is to just call a company to come out and do a full cleaning of all the duct work. I don't have allergies hardly at all but this house has had my sinuses on fire every morning and we'd rather spend the money to have someone clean the whole system out than to try and just buy a couple of in room air purifiers.

I'll get a couple of pics in the next week or so as things start getting organized.

So you got the house? Awesome! Congrats!

Glad to hear things are coming along man!

Its amazing how much dust a house can have. Ours is terrible and the renovations we've doing doing haven't been helping.

sleewell wrote:appraisers are fucking morons

Dis. My first home was appraised at 100k in 2005 but ultimately we decided to take it off the market, stay put, and do some renovations. 3k refinishing hardwood floors, 3k in privacy fences, remodeled bathroom, etc. etc, then I got it appraised in 2010 and it came in at 95k. I understand the housing market tanked but dayum.

ovid9 wrote:Its amazing how much dust a house can have.

Also dis. The ductwork in my first home was installed in the 1940s and wrapped in asbestos no less. Mesothelioma, lol. In 2000 I hired someone to clean it out. It took 9 hours and there was a stack of loaded filters over four feet high from the machine they used to suck out the dust.

Good luck with your new home, I hope everything works out!

Glad to hear things are going well for you and your family Drew. Us I.T. Geeks gotta stick together, especially when we have Splawn and Jet City in common too. Looking forward to new clips from the new digs!!

Cheers,

Race