Buying A Home
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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.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
so... what's wrong with it?
I was tooling around online and found a house that's assessing for $81,000 in an area where average home prices are $220k or above. All of the pictures are from a previous owner (red flag), the description says it needs work (red flag), flood insurance is required (red flag).
So now it's killing me, because the pictures are gorgeous. Is there a way to find out why it's being assessed so low? Obviously anyone who buys it should rename it "The Money Pit"... but still... so curious.
Re: so... what's wrong with it?
So the previous owner took great pics of the house, and the present owner is using them? And saying the house needs work?
Tells me they either did no maintenance or just out and out let the house fall into disrepair.
~Benjamin Franklin
DS dx with celiac disease 5/28/10
Assessed value =/= market value.
The assessed value of a home is only a percentage of it's market value. (In my county, it's 50% of the market value, and that percentage was chosen in 1991).
What website are you viewing photos? A realty website? Zillow? County Assessment?
Yeah, it's the tax assessment that's coming up as $87,090 and that's with $39,790 of improvements in that estimate. It's listed on several websites including the realtor's, Zillow, Trulia, and many other places. It's been on the market for 3 years and is a short sale.
The last sale was for $242,000 in 2008. I'm thinking someone bought it, took out a ton of loans against it and then let it fall in to disrepair. Also... since it's in a flood plain and we had snowmageddon in 2009... yeah. Water damage much?
So sad though, it's such a pretty house. (In the pictures.
)
We looked at several homes that were much less expensive than the others in the neighborhood. I loved several of them based on the pictures on the website, but when we met with our buyer's agent, he was able to point out problems with basically each one.
One, you could see foundation cracks above the garage, and obviously it had a huge underlying foundation issue.
One, there was rotting wood that hadn't been painted/treated right on the backside of the house.
One, an addition had been tacked onto the house and half the rooms in the house had no windows, no ventilation, no light beyond a bulb or two in the ceiling. I didn't notice til I was actually IN the house.
If you have a realtor, they might be able to tell why. Sadly, in our case, there was always a huge reason for the low price. We did not find any steals.
So what is the current sale price?
$81,000. In my original price I should have said it's "Selling" for $81,000, not "assessing" for $81,000.
It's not my house, so here ya go: http://www.trulia.com/property/1076078933-775-Creek-Rd-Downingtown-PA-19335
Also, I am so fascinated with this house now and what its issues might be. I am having an incredibly slow day at work. Thank you for indulging my naive curiosity.
We have a similar problem house in our development. It's been sitting vacant since August 2009. The owners just moved out one day.
We had snowmageddon in 2009/2010 and major rain storms in September 2011, so there has to be water damage in the basement. Lump that in with the house not being winterized until fall 2011 and that house is a money pit.
The description says "light cosmetic repairs" needed. Yeah right. We know that the pics are over 2 years old and the place is thrashed.
Most houses sell in my development sell for $115k-$130k (depending on whether they're updated or original). This one has been listed as a foreclosure at $85k since 2009, and it's an updated end unit. That's not a good sign.
http://pandce.proboards.com/index.cgi#general
Ooh, that is a pretty house. Although reading the description on Trulia, I think I found the problem...
MUST SELL! BRING ALL OFFERS. THE BANKS WANTS TO MOVE THIS PROPERTY! THIS HOME NEEDS WORK! BE Cautious. ... The pics are from the last listing and can easily look like this with some elbow grease. ...BRING ALL OFFERS! flood ins req. PICTURES ARE from previous ownership & It needs WORK to get it back to ondition in pics
The house needs major work. I'm betting that the creek flooded during snowmageddon and it hasn't been cleaned up yet. Mold remediation and major termite and pest control wouldn't surprise me.
http://pandce.proboards.com/index.cgi#general
Exactly. Bet those gorgeous hardwood floors are all water stained and moldy. And when it rains you have to pack up and stick to the second floor. Makes me sad.
Definitely pour one out for that house. It was so pretty.
http://pandce.proboards.com/index.cgi#general
Ah, the missing link! lol Now it all makes sense.
I would be curious, too! And even more curious to see the rate for flood insurance on that property since it's obvious it has had prior flood damage.
Seriously, pictures and descriptions can be so deceiving. We looked at 8 houses this past weekend and only one was decent enough for us to put in an offer on. We scrutinized and pored over each listing (and pictures!) and only looked at the ones in person that we thought would be a good fit. One ended up having water damage, two of them had super small bedrooms and another had a hole in the door to the garage to vent the dryer out there!!
I've come to the realization that without seeing the home in person, the pictures are useless.
God this is so true. We went to see a short sale house last weekend after looking at some pictures. I have no idea when those pictures were taken, but the owners had TRASHED the place since then. Everything was filthy, and they had 6 cats which clearly peed wherever they wanted. And they had so much stuff everywhere it looked like an episode of Hoarders. A total shame, because it clearly was once a nice house.
~Benjamin Franklin
DS dx with celiac disease 5/28/10
And bathrooms. I usually skip over listings that don't have any interior pics or only pics of the living room and a bedroom or two.
http://pandce.proboards.com/index.cgi#general
I've seen a few where the bathroom was definitely the deal breaker. Claw foot bathtubs are adorable... but not when they're cracked, in the middle of the room and the only option for bathing. Quick showers are part of my life.
We were those people that looked at (literally) hundreds of houses before choosing the house we're currently in the process of buying. Usually the houses I was most excited to see were the houses I liked least when we went.
Every time the pictures made me think "I'm not so sure", if I went and looked - I left thinkign "Yeah, I didn't need to waste my time.".
~Benjamin Franklin
DS dx with celiac disease 5/28/10
It's funny that you say this, the home that we put an offer in for this weekend had only two pictures of the exterior. The inside ended up bring immaculate and well taken care of, I'm really not sure why there were no interior pics. Even our REA wasn't too keen on us looking at it because of the lack of pics.
Same with the house we bought. I was leary that there were 3 bathrooms but zero pictures of the bathrooms. It turned out that the bathrooms were fine.
It's definitely something I'm always leary about when looking for houses online though for sure.