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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
XP from Buying a home board
Thought I would ask this here as well, I know there are a few real estate people.
I know it's the weekend and slow but was curious about this.
We are looking for homes around Houston. The list price on most of the homes we looked at is higher than the appraised price. Is this normal? I thought it would be the other way around for loan reasons. This would be our first home so I obviously have no experience in this area. Thanks for enlightening me!
Re: XP from Buying a home board
The tax value is something you should use for only for figuring taxes, IMO. Our new house is valued on the rolls for 65k more than we paid for it - the previous owners never protested. Our other home is 35k under what it's being sold for on the tax rolls. We protest.
Thanks!
Also just curious, if the difference is so big would that have any indication that the banks appraisal would be different and possibly therefore where they won't finance it?
Sorry if these are silly questions, this is our first house. We only started looking this past Wednesday (we got some great news about where we live now)
Tax "appraisal" isn't an appraisal at all. They should really call it something else. It's just the value the house is taxed on and it SHOULD be equal or less then the actual value, but some people don't fight it and others have a really hard time fighting and making a case. There are even professional companies that specialize in fighting property taxes.
A tax appraisal is based on what's going on in your neighborhood and several other factors. They don't actually look at the house (never go inside) to come up with the number.
The lower the tax appraisal the better for the owner. You pay less taxes
The city wants it high so they collect more money. Bottom line, it doesn't have anything to do with market value.
Thank you! That explained a lot in "laymen's" terms. FH was counting houses out because our thinking process was wrong. That puts homes back on our list.
It's not an appraisal. It's tax value. Ask your agent to run a CMA (competitive marketing analysis) on the house. That will give you a very good idea of what the home will appraise for.
When you put a house in contract the bank will come out and do an appraisal. The appraiser will go through the house, look at the finishes, measure the sq footage (it will probably be different than HCAD) and give a hard number. At that point, if it doesn't appraise for contract price, you can walk without penalty, your agent can go back to the seller and ask them to reduce the price to the appraised value or (and yes, this does happen) you can bring more money to the table. Another option is to challenge the appraisal and ask them for a second opinion. It's all a numbers game and some appraisers make mistakes if they aren't familiar with a neighborhood.
Hope this helps.
It does help a lot. We are looking in the Conroe/Woodlands area.
I actually have a question I would like to PM you if it's ok. If you can't answer it for work/rules or whatever reason it is ok. I'm not sure if you are allowed to give that kind of advice/information.
I can't PM from my phone... email me.. brandisellshouses@yahoo.com.