Need help analyzing an “easy” flip.

[Joshua Biondi]

I had someone reach out to me wanting to sell their property in Kingsland, GA. It’s a 5 bedroom, 3 full bath, 3,148 sq ft, fully furnished, single family that needs no work done. He said I could rent it out for $1800 a month (the numbers don’t work as a rental), but I was thinking it might be an “easy” flip.

The offering price is $229,000. He sent me a certified appraisal letter from Dec 2018 saying the opinion of value was $261,000. He said he’s selling it for below appraisal value because he wants to start living in his RV full time.

From the county auditor site the 2019 appraised value is $231,315.

It also looks like he’s been trying to sell it over the last year with a few price drops, but I can’t tell how accurate these sites like Zillow and Trulia are in regards to past information. I’m fairly new to all of this.

My first question is, typically how accurate is the county auditor’s site in regards to their appraised value?

And also, what else do I need to know to determine if this is a good deal, and where can I go to get more information?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[Greg Dickerson]

@Joshua Biondi you can not rely on tax assessment or platforms like Zillow for their values. It’s based on averages of surrounding properties.

The way you value a property is looking at recently sold comparable properties. Usually you want no more than 6 months back and even more recent in hotter markets. You can get that info from Zillow and Realtor.com as well as the tax assessor depending on how fast they are with recording the property transfer information.

Given the house hasn’t sold in a year tells me it’s not a good market and or property. If it was a hot market there would be offers if the price is close to reasonable.