Sit in your truck at the cul de sac and admire the view for a few hours while you get some paperwork done. Then if they have questions they can just come ask you, and you don’t have to give them your phone number.
Decision made… I am not going to be at the project today. I sent some instructions to my agent who forwarded to buyer’s agent. Buyer’s agent sent a couple of questions and I have answered them. We will see how it goes
Appraisal came into the lender. All I know is ‘appraisal came in at value’. Pheww!!! dodged a potential bullet. And, this house is valued above all other recent comparables in the immediate neighborhood so I am very grateful that he was subjective about how special the view and the property is.
I always find it amusing that bank appraisers come in with a value exactly the same as the contract sales price (or lower if there is a big issue). Not once has an appraisal come back higher than the sales price that I know of. Sometimes owners will advertise a listing as ‘Above XYZ appraised value’ but that just means they hired a private appraiser to come up with a value for themselves. That is not a bank appraiser coming in to value for a loan.
Banks want to maintain whatever LTV they agreed upon with the borrower, hence the at value appraisal…
Huge congrats!! 
Well, what is an appraisal, really? It attempts to establish the fair market price of a property. And the market price is the price that two unrelated, un-coerced parties are willing to pay/sell for something under ordinary circumstances.
Which is exactly what cb and her buyer are, and almost every buyer/seller.
For items like houses, where generally every one is unique in some way, it’s almost impossible to conclude the market value is anything but what the contract price is, unless the price is really crazy, because there is nothing that is directly comparable.
The real problem with appraisals these days came from reforms put in after the foreclosure crisis (in which unethical appraisers played a big part), where appraisers are now randomly assigned from a pool and may not know anything about the area they are appraising and the local market conditions.
For example, an appraiser unfamiliar with certain areas of San Diego may not fully understand how much the views affect the price, or where the house is in relation to the airport flight patterns, and they could wind up choosing bad comps or just undervaluing a prime property like cb’s based just on square footage price of comps.
DW has rescued more than one deal from appraisers who have never been within 50 miles of the neighborhood property they are appraising is in, by going to the lender and getting the appraisal “reviewed” by someone with more local knowledge.
Totally agree. About 3 years ago I had an appraiser show up from Corona (inland empire, very distressed real estate market). I just knew he wasn’t going to know how to value ocean views and/or desireable streets in the neighborhood.
It is not surprising to me that the appraisal comes out at market price; that is the way it should be most of the time, since that is the price the market determined (assuming an arms-length transaction).
It would be very odd indeed for an appraisal to come in ABOVE the sales price, absent some sort of evidence of duress on behalf of the seller. What’s the market value of a house? What someone is willing to pay for it. What’s the best evidence that someone is NOT willing to pay a significantly higher amount over the contract price for a house? The fact that no buyer has emerged who is willing to pay that higher price (which can be inferred from the fact that the seller entered into this contract). As a general presumption, it should work well in the vast majority of cases.
Still waiting for “report” from home inspection. Nothing was reported by buyer’s agent yet.
cb, is there a deadline in place already for you to make any repairs/fixes?? If so, their not telling you yet what the issues are could be a good sign.
The deadline to release the Physical Inspection Contingency is Tuesday
Still do not have any report. But, the buyer’s agent has requested a “Chimney Sweep inspection” on Sunday. I know what the issue is… if a really old chimney was built out of straight brick and mortar, the mortar crumbles over time. This creates a fire safety issue because flames and heat shooting up chimney can get to the wood surrounding structure through the mortar joints.
Luckily, we already got up on the roof and determined that the fireplace was built with a clay inset liner so the chimney is still safe to use.
A regular inspector cannot see up the chimney from the fireplace opening so he probably called out this issue and the buyer wants it inspected from the top. Just to make everyone feel better, my carpenter is going over there tomorrow morning, get up on a ladder and take pictures of the clay flue liner. I really don’t want that Chimney Sweep inspector (whatever that is…???) walking all over the roof because a) it is steep and dangerous and b) if he cracks even one tile we have to tear off rows of tile to make the repair.
Also need to clean all the ash residue out of the fireplace because I’ve had a fire going in there twice and forgot to clean it out:)
The inspection report just got forwarded to me. I think the guy spent 8 hrs at the house. It is very thorough and reasonable. He caught the 2 things I knew we missed…spark arrestor on top of chimney and we forgot to put the plastic tops on the basement toilet bolts.
He caught some stupid things we missed like forgetting to caulk around bottom of my women’s restroom toilet and trimming in the top of one of the old glass panels on the deck. Also we missed insulation in a small part of the attic. My carpenter mentioned it during our detailed inspection of the attic but we decided to fix it after inspection
Did he catch the thing you left for him to catch??
But there is one issue noted that I am going to push back on. In the crawlspace under the bedroom wing there are concrete stem walls with wood cripple walls above to floor joists. There are good anchor bolts holding them to the concrete stem walls.
Current building code requires that the cripple walls are supposed to be sheared with panels. He noted it as “might want to consider”. The agent is hinting that I have to do that. Nope
Yes, forgot to put a spark arrestor on chimney. House has survived 80 yrs without one. But its difficult to get up there. Need a very tall ladder and a lot of guts to get up there
Sounds like a very good inspector. Hold on to his business card – you might want to use him before you decide to buy Flip #7!
Veryhappy…good idea. He could be helpful looking at something I want to purchase, or even better, I might want to be proactive and have the house inspected before I go to market
Yesterday the fireplace inspector came. He noted the same spark arrestor but also listed no damper in fireplace (disclosed already) and a small crack in brick mortar in back of fireplace box at bottom. Pretty sure buyer is going to ask for repairs or credit
8 hours??? I’ve never heard of an inspection taking that long.
That is what the buyer’s agent said about the main inspection. I’m just very proud of the results. For how large and slightly complex this house is we came through with flying colors.
He didn’t even call out the air gap. Probably because I had the dishwasher installation instructions laid on counter above dishwasher with the manufacturer instructions on how to drain dishwasher without air gap completely circled
I’ll bet that the inspector has finally encountered enough new kitchens with dishwashers installed without air gaps
that he finally understands that its fine…