<p>jym, I’m so sorry. The only good news is that the summer is over, so buyer activity and sales might be picking up again. I sure hope so, and that you get a new buyer at a higher price. Good luck.</p>
<p>Got to meet the husband half of the new neighbors who bought the nice house at the end of the block. Don’t know how old they are, but they have their first child on the way any minute. Very nice guy, and said he couldn’t get over how friendly everyone in the neighborhood has been. Said he was cutting his grass over the weekend and about 30 people came by to say hello. </p>
<p>Lots of activity on the vacant house next door. Must have been a significant price drop. Still a dead tree in the front yard. Lookers are staying less than five minutes, so I doubt there will be any movement there ever.</p>
<p>Drove down my mom’s old street and saw lots of houses for sale. Some have undergone significant facelifts. Some that were bought around the time we put mom’s house up for sale six years ago are already on the market. </p>
<p>Yet still, the radio talk shows talk about how everyone wants to move to our fair city. I so want to call them up and ask them where these people are moving to, because it’s certainly not anywhere near where we live.</p>
<p>How do buyers get mortgages, does anyone know? Is it the buyer, the attorney or the real estate agent? And who controls the flow of information? I’m asking because the last time we bought a house was more than 25 years ago, so I’m clueless. We have a problem because the buyer’s attorney is telling us one story, and the the buyer’s real estate agent is telling us a different story, and the delta is about 2.5 months between closing 2 weeks from now, versus closing in mid-December. They don’t seem to get their act together, and neither one is answering phone calls from our attorney.</p>
<p>JYM, so sorry. It must be frustrating. It’s really a great location, someone is bound to fall for it soon.</p>
<p>
The buyer contacts either a bank or mortgage broker, selects the program they want (15 yr/30 yr fixed, ARM, points, etc), and fills out an application.</p>
<p>The bank checks your credit, orders an appraisal, and will collect a bunch of other info from you such as pay stubs, bank account statements, proof of assets, etc. Assuming everything is ok, they give you a comittment, and you schedule a close date. At that time you show up with a wad of money, sign your name about 50 times, and that’s it.</p>
<p>I’m in the middle of two refi’s right now, they will each take 4 to 6 weeks from start to finish. We like to close as close to the end of the month as possible, it reduces the closing costs.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why the buyer’s attorney or RE agent would even be involved, other than to check occasionally to see that you are making progress.</p>
<p>nre- thanks so much.</p>
<p>I agree with NRE–we as buyers got our own financing to purchase. Our real estate agent had nothing to do with it, just us and the lenders we were interested in. It wasn’t complicated, we just put in the paperwork & made sure it all worked out. </p>
<p>I have a friend who is trying to purchase property for business. He’s unhappy that it’s taking him as long as it is for the financing to come through. It’s taking him more than 2 weeks longer than promised by the lender(s) and he’s going to walk if they can’t work things on today & find another lender (who has approached him).</p>
<p>Have not heard of attorneys getting involved unless its a 1031 exchange or something more complicated than a regular purchase of property.</p>
<p>To sum it up, CNBC had the following report:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>“It doesn’t take that long to pull it together. If you can get the MLS listings from the sales, they will have most of the data you need. …
What is “similar”? Similar square footage, similar lot size, same number of bedrooms, same condition. The less similar they are, the more adjustments you have to make (for example,…”</p>
<p>So I called the assessor, they explained the process, including the fact that the numbers come from sales from Jan to March of this year. So I look at the document from our assessment, and noticed NO homes during that time frame, and this…</p>
<p>"All sold comparable sales are are verified closed with 2 sources. All sold comparable are arms length transactions sold through local MLS. Adjustments made for GLA over 100 sq.ft of difference at $40 per sq.ft., $10,000 per bathroom, $5,000 per half bathroom, $5,000 per car garage, $10,000 per pool, $10,000 per upgrades or updating being superior or inferior to the subject. Adjustments made for lot sizes over 3,000 sq.ft. of difference. No bedroom adjustments are warranted because they are figured in with the GLA. It is common in the area for site value to be over 20% of the total value of a property this has no marketability issues. All adjustments are derived form my knowledge of the neighborhood. I have done a series of paired sales analysis of properties in the area in the last year to come up with adjustments for the area. All sold comparables hold weight in the valuation of this property with the most going to #1 for being the most proximate sale. Comps #2, #3 and #4 hold secondary weight and offer support to the
value.</p>
<p>And especially</p>
<ul>
<li>Comp #3 is a comp that is over 6 months back from the effective date of appraisal, this comp was utilized to bracket the GLA and lot size adjustments. This is the only comp I could find in the last year within the neighborhood to bracket these adjustments. Due to the lack of comparable listings I was forced to comps with more than a 20% difference in GLA (comp #5). Across the grid adjustments were needed do to the lack of similar comps in the area with the exact same characteristics. The predominant value is different by over 10% due to the home being bigger than the predominant home in the area and has a larger lot with a pool. The predominant value is different by over 10% this is not an over improvement and it has no effect on marketability.*</li>
</ul>
<p>My head hurts…</p>
<p>Alwaysamom, I would LOVE to turn this over to someone with experience. How did you find your company?</p>
<p>shrinkrap, You can find help from any real estate appraiser with home assessment speciaty for a cost around $300-400. You should shop around and check their references before hire them.</p>
<p>Shrinkrap…how do you know your house is over-assessed 100,000 if there aren’t any comps?</p>
<p>Well, I’m not exactly sure if I understand there are NO “comps” ( comparable sales?), but my tax bill says I am paying taxes on a property value of $457,000 ( per a notice of a "value reduction from $475k), but a recent appraisal for the purpose of refinancing said the value was $375K. In the appraisal, the appraiser list three homes, but with what seems like a “disclaimer” copied above.</p>
<p>This is on the county website</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.solanocounty.com/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?blobid=7697[/url]”>http://www.solanocounty.com/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?blobid=7697</a></p>
<p>*** County Assessor/Recorder Marc Tonnesen lauds the passage of AB992 which protects property owners from the predatory companies demanding high fees to file an application for property tax assessment review and relief. Tonnesen’s office provides this service free of charge."</p>
<p>shinkrap,</p>
<p>Appraisal results maybe different for different purposes. For example, it could be based on Estate, Immediate Sale or Tax Reduction. You need to specify what kind of appraisal when you have it done. So, you should call the appraiser back and perhaps have him re-evaluate based on tax reduction requirements. You should get a fee reduction, as the majority of the work is done, he just have to play with the comps.</p>
<p>Okay, thanks. </p>
<p>FWIW, this has forced me to read the fine print. </p>
<p>So the assessor hired by the bank we are financing with listed six “comps”, but three of them are not “closed”, so apparently they don’t count much using the “Sales Comparison Approach”. </p>
<p>Those three homes are smaller than ours, and on smaller properties, with lesser “upgrades” but on the market for more than ours was assessed.They might be in for a rude awakening! </p>
<p>Of the other three “comps”, one was about a year ago, and none between Jan and March, so there are none I can use to appeal the property tax appraisal. </p>
<p>The figure using the “cost Approach” comes a bit closer to the county assessment. </p>
<p>For the purposes of the refinance, the mortgage appraisal is much less than expected, so we don’t have enough equity to qualify for the loan we wanted. We qualified for one just about as good. Would it make sense to appeal the appraisal for the refi?</p>
<p>regarding the appraisal for refi purposes, the bank ordered the appraisal and you have no part of it. Until you got the appraisal, you don’t even know who the appraiser is. You can appeal to the BANK, but don’t hold your hopes too high. Now a days, the banks are ultra conservative and they do not wish to depart that money with them cause they had enough bad debt on hand already.</p>
<p>Since now you know who the appraiser is, call him back to redo the appraisal for tax reduction purposes, it should be pretty fast and at a reduced cost.</p>
<p>Perfect! Thanks!</p>
<p>Well, the For Sale sign is in the yard. The staged pictures turned out awesome. My daughter couldn’t believe it was really our house. Here we go!</p>
<p>In our area, the assessed value you pay taxes on bears no relation to the actual value - houses were last assessed in the 1950s. (Ours is more than what we paid for, but about half of what our house would have gone for at the height of the market, and still less than I think houses in our area go for.) When you fight for a lower assessment, you look for houses the same size as yours that are paying less in taxes.</p>
<p>We just got a pre-emptive offer on our house, a small percent over asking, no contingencies, very clean. We’d priced low so were expecting multiple offers and had a slightly higher price in mind if someone had come in early. We’re thinking of taking it anyway - bird in hand & all that. Will sleep on it and decide in the morning.</p>
<p>Vballmom…awesome…</p>