All Forum Posts by: James McHugh

Thanks. I'm on the newer side of REI but my intuition told me this property is a bit over valued. Thanks

I am looking at several houses. One location I asked for a list of improvement they have done to the house and I only got this list: (not very thorough) Repainted exterior. added gutters. rebuilt fence picket by picket. painted interior. new carpet upstairs. laid tile in master and upstairs bathrooms. put in new sliding glass doors. replaced all bathroom fixtures. replaced both shower heads. laid some sod. we also put a few new door stoppers in... To me this doesn't seem like much but I was trying to come up with a general ballpark figure before I pay for an appraiser. Any suggestions how to arrive at this ballpark figure?

Thank you, that helps!

Originally posted by @Christopher Brainard:

@James McHugh

Zillow can't accurately tell you what any property is worth now, so I highly doubt that any of their five year predictions will hold. If you want accurate values, you need to get comps and property assess a property.

As far as future values go, you take take your best educated guess based on a variety of statistics (like job growth, population growth, increase in median wages, etc) but nobody has an accurate crystal ball. Speculation is Speculation.

-Christopher

 So Zillow is useless as a tool to estimate appreciation averages?  Is there any online source that is more accurate?  This house I'm looking at seems to have went up in cost so much in 5 years in relation to all the "comps" in the neighborhood, it seems strange to me, I can't quite understand why.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.  Just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something.

Seller offering a one year home warranty as part of the sale.

1) Is this a good thing? Is it really because they are oh-so-generous and confident or is it because they know something I don't and believe something is on the verge of breaking down?

2) Does that create any leverage for the seller when negotiating purchase price?

Is there a good authority website that allows you to properly estimate appreciation over say, a 5 year period in a specific zip code?  For example, I am using Zillow.com.  I have a house I'm looking currently for sale that sold 5 years ago for 129k (Zillow priced the real value at 170K for that period in time - why the big difference?)  AND at the time the average for that zip code was placed at 149k.

Now, it's listed for 199k, with Zillow saying it's worth about 193k and average for the zip code is 169k.  Forecasting for the next year says the appreciation is mostly flat, perhaps a tiny increase of a few thousand dollars.  

Am I going about evaluating this the right way or should I be using other methods?  Looking at it's last sale price to what it's listed at now, there's no way it appreciated about 80k or 54% when that zip has only appreciated on average about 13%.  Any pointers for this newbie?  Thanks!

When starting out, is it better to rent or own your own house while starting to invest in real estate? Pros / cons? Thanks!