If you think learning 3D software was hard….wait till you have to learn the job of an appraiser.
YOU WILL HAVE TO!
You are fighting arbitrary superficial judgement of whatever nin-come-poop comes to your door. HIS word is FINAL. …even if he IS an idiot.
Shrinks say, never fight a crazy person… well, in this case YOU HAVE TO.
Just by you saying he is wrong, rankles him.. and he gets defensive….
The banks have a Chinese wall….and say he is the decider… so they don’t get into a 2008 depression issue.
But he still is an idiot, that MUST under value your house to cover HIS ass, and the bank will UNDER value his bid (by 20%) to cover THEIR ass, and when it is over… you do not have ENOUGH money to do the remodel, or addition you have just spent 18 months working on…. drawing, getting bids, interviewing AIA, interviewing Contractors, getting permitsl…..ALL DOWN THE DRAIN because of some numb skull, that did your appraisal as he watch TV at night, looking at Zillow comps for 1 hr of his life….AND GETS PAID FOR IT!!!!
HIS 1 HOUR, can destroy the past 18months of creative drawing, learning software, fighting software, picking a contractor, getting permits… it is all done….NO MONEY FOR YOU!!!! DONE, FAIL, FAIL, FAIL, FAIL, FAIL.
When is an bank appraisal done for your dream house?
Once you have “construction ready” drawings from an architect, AND a real bid from a real contractor on how much this house will cost. This is a year or two of your hard work.
Now, your future hinges some random guy, who will tell YOU what HE thinks your house will be worth…
The appraiser. He will notoriously lowball the projected value of your new or remodeled house, to cover themselves…
He is a stumbling block you must step over…!
And of this number, the bank will only give you 80%.
This is an ugly subject.
A pre-appraisal of our new house will be insulting. You just have to fight back. You are dealing with a stubborn idiot…. making sure he can keep his job. He does not care about you or your house at all…. only keeping his job.
YOU have to fight, YOU have to defend your house, your drawings, and the comps.
Since the recession of ’08, banks are scared stiff about holding the bag, on overvalued houses.
This fear is passed down to the appraisers… they do not want to over appraise the house and lose THEIR job.
It is a fear-based world…not logical, or optimistic, but everyone covering their asses…again, this is Human Nature….everyone want to make a living, to pay & protect THEIR babies…NOT yours…
Just the way of the world.
So, each fearful person lowers your appraisal by 5% or 10% to cover their jobs.
This adds up.. so a house you want to build for $1M, can only get $700=$800K from the bank.
See the squeeze?
YOU surely don’t have an extra $100-$200K laying around to make up the difference… and by this time…you have already spent a year or two drawing & working with your architect for “final drawings OK for construction” …
Even if you DO have extra cash, beyond what the bank will loan you, you will need this extra cash, to cover the 5 to 10% upgrades, and change orders that WILL happen as your house is built. No cash, no build. Just that simple.
This guy… can be the one to make you fail. FAIL. This hurts…
So what do you do?
YOU have to now learn the appraisers job… see?
You do everyone’s job for them….only YOU do not get paid…
This is sickening and depressing…learning other people’s jobs to “correct their mistakes” or to defend your drawings.
Eat it. Do it. Move on.
90% of the time, a house is appraised by a simple calculation … square feet x local price per square feet…and this is tweaked by a few amenities… an appraiser can do his job, while watching TV at night, land looking at Zillow pictures.
Sure they will tweak appraisal by amenities… such as garages, or decks, or elevator…but these are just tweaks… they literally “dial an appraisal” to fit the logic of price per square feet/ number of square feet.
1000sf x $300/sf = $300,000 house.
BUT WHAT REALLY MOVES THE NUMBER… ?
The C – value..!
This is a multiplier of your final appraisal…not a tweak or an addition but a huge multiplier of the condition of your house… (your NEW house!!!!!) If it is a virtually NEW house, this C-value is a good bump up, and will overcompensate for the fearful 5 to 10 % knock the bank and appraiser decrease your house for…to cover their continued employment.
The process….
When you get the call from an appraiser, to visit your house, he will ignore your pleas to “let me clean up a bit, before you come over”.
HE DOES NOT CARE… HE WANTS TO DO JOB, AND GET PAID….THEN DO NEXT JOB.
He would LOVE it if you were not even home, so he can snap some pics and get in and out, without dealing with you. You are a waste of his time….HIS TIME….ugh.
He will assure you that dishes in the sink and laundry on the bed, will not lower your appraisal.
Candid pics of a house in its natural state, will not impress a bank or an appraiser.
SO.. clear the house before they come…
clear every counter, bed, surface.
The object left out will be focused on the pic, not the room. Junk on a bed, or dishes on a counter… these look like crime scene pics, not appraisal pics.
Pros stick banal things like a bowl of yellow lemons for color, or an orchid to focus.
CONCLUSION…
An appraisal is one of the 10 or 15 people, that can & will destroy your dreams, or devastate your life savings.
The qualifications to be an appraiser is amazingly low, AND the bank picks them “at random”.
Your future depends on this random nut job.
You WILL get a low appraisal, it is up to YOU to reverse engineer it, painfully list his mistakes of his comps, and ask the bank for a second appraisal.
I have found the second one is diale-in just enough to get just enough money for the bank loan to go thru… this is all such an arbitrary, subjective field… you just have to push back with your facts, and write a “nice” letter like this:
Sure, font 48, is not normally used in a business letter…but, it evokes the emotion and fury of this one guy, destroying 2 years of your hard work to design a house.
Ironically, AFER the house is built, the appraisal comes in exactly right or even more than you thought…
++++++++Of course, our appraisal came in too low…The gap between this number and out bid (20-30%), would come out of our cash…. Our cash is saved for contingencies…..not this.
So, I had to learn the appraisal business too. (this took an extra 40 hours of study, comps, logic, and letter prep)…in short is is just the matter of square feet times a local price per square feet…in our area this is $300/sf. Then, there is a magic multiplier…for grade…NO one thinks of this…but this number can blow out your appraisal by 10 20%… keep this in mind as you do your research.
I had to send a 10-page letter, some of it in font 72, at the insanity of my appraisal…it worked, and the bank PAID for a second appraisal… that made more sense… I worked an extra 40 hrs …doing someone else’s job… but, it had to be done. I won….but I wish my first appraiser would have done HIS job HE got PAID for, instead of ME working for FREE.