Discussion Do you look up county's appraisal when buying houses

[Pita Lucas]

Dear Everyone,

I have been a real estate investor for a couple of years and I think that the internet has transformed our way of finding the target investment property. Many online websites such as Zillow and Trulia offer us a wealth of property information and provides us with more transparent sources than before. For crime statistics, for flood zone for HOA information and you name it, almost all those information can be found somewhere online. Although there might be some inaccurate or misleading info, we as our home buyers/investors at least have some source of information to double check and verify them later on with respective professionals.

In my process of hunting properties, I heavily relied on the county's appraisal website information to facilitate my investment decision.  I would like to bring this topic to this forum and see if any other people have any GOOD/BAD experiences in using county's appraisal information. What do you think of the dependability of those county's appraisal values(i.e. the property's market value)? As far as i know, the valuation method used in county's appraisal is called "CAMA" and there should be room for improvement since it was calculated by the computers. Specifically for my local market, I noticed that you might get a good deal if your purchase price plus any repair costs if any are less than the current year appraisal value.  Moreover, I often turn to the county appraisal website for the transaction history of the properties. Since there is a classification of "Qualified " and "Unqualifed" purchases, we are able to identify what are historical prices for the house which occurred between  actual buyers and sellers.

I hope that anyone can share any knowledge with everyone and thanks in advance for your kind attention.

Pita