Who best to document home vlaues

[Rockwell]

Hello,

Am wondering opinions on who people think is best to have home values documented for a BK7? Appraisal Service? or a Real Estate company?

Seems to me a Real Estate company would be best suited as they might be more in tune to real world, current market values of what a home could/would actually sell for. A home might be worth $300K but might only sell for $210K in this market.

Thank you in advance for any feedback!!!

[tobee43]

our property was in nj.....although we filed in florida we listed the property based on zillow.com comps in the immediate area.

the trustee never questioned the value...although, it did not matter much as we surrendered the property in the bk.

i would not pay anyone a dime as sales in the area are public record...so i would get them off the net and print them out....it should be fine that way.

[angles]

We pulled our personal house value off of Zillows and submitted that to our attorney as the value of our home. Our attorney is also a Trustee. Just to be sure, he had a real-estate person on his staff take a look and they evaluated our home 30K above Zillows, which reflected equity in the house. At that point we had to use what exemption we had to keep the property. If he did not do this then there was a good possibility that the Trustee would have taken and sold the home. I did not particularly have had a good experience with this attorney, but this is the one thing he did that I appreciated.

Whatever number you submit as the value the trustee can dispute it. If you have a real-estate professional appraise it then the trustee is more likely to accept that appraisal then to contest the value you had assigned to the property. If you are surrendering property and don’t really care if the trustee takes it or not then I would follow tobee's advice and simply use zillows or some other no cost documentation.

[tcreegan]

Hi Rockwell,

Agree w/ tobee, you can easily do what a real estate agent/company/appraiser can do...pull up sales on similar real estate in your neighborhood.

If your house has some condition problems and you want a low appraisal; get a 'walk-through' appraiser. These guys are usually independent and work for mortgage lenders and insurance companies. Point out all the problems to them.

I've seen a bunch of posts and 9 out of 10 say zillow was way too high or way too low. Not even consistently high or low either.

Another factor is the difference between market prices and foreclosure prices. Generally foreclosure prices are a fair bit lower. Again something you can pull from the county or whoever keeps property records.

Hope this helps a little...

Tom in Colo

[tobee43]

Hi Rockwell,

Agree w/ tobee, you can easily do what a real estate agent/company/appraiser can do...pull up sales on similar real estate in your neighborhood.

If your house has some condition problems and you want a low appraisal; get a 'walk-through' appraiser. These guys are usually independent and work for mortgage lenders and insurance companies. Point out all the problems to them.

I've seen a bunch of posts and 9 out of 10 say zillow was way too high or way too low. Not even consistently high or low either.

Another factor is the difference between market prices and foreclosure prices. Generally foreclosure prices are a fair bit lower. Again something you can pull from the county or whoever keeps property records.

Hope this helps a little...

Tom in Colo

tom of course makes another excellent point here....there is a BIG difference between market prices and foreclosure prices....and many times on zillow at least nowadays they are foreclosure prices!!!!


angles....you got that right.....a trustee can question or dispute the number...actually any number they want to....however, they are not dumb, and know that the real estate market is down the tubes....

yesterday it was announced on the all news stations that housing values have dropped 30%....now think about what good would it be anyway for any trustee to attempt to dispute your house...tell them go a head sell it for what THEY think it's worth and of course who the heck is going to buy it??? who???? so if that trustee feels it's worth MORE than zillow or comp sales...something is really odd.

[Fallonedward]

This is what we did, we went to our city assessor's office and got all of the recent sales in our subdivision. Zero sales in the 15 months leading up to our BK7, but 6 houses in foreclosure. So based our value on the one home in our sub that sold at foreclosure which was $35k less then what zillow.com put our home at, but the trustee did not seem to have an issue with it.

our property was in nj.....although we filed in florida we listed the property based on zillow.com comps in the immediate area.

the trustee never questioned the value...although, it did not matter much as we surrendered the property in the bk.

i would not pay anyone a dime as sales in the area are public record...so i would get them off the net and print them out....it should be fine that way.

[keepsmiling]

I am assuming OP needs a lower price than Zillow, which is the boat I am in if I want to keep my house.
We had a realtor come in and pointed out all the problems with the house. She wrote up a CMA that is far more realistic than Zillow -80K LESS (frankly may still be a little on the high side)- but at least gives us some breathing room.
Not ready to file yet so no report on how it will fly.

[tobee43]

I am assuming OP needs a lower price than Zillow, which is the boat I am in if I want to keep my house.
We had a realtor come in and pointed out all the problems with the house. She wrote up a CMA that is far more realistic than Zillow -80K LESS (frankly may still be a little on the high side)- but at least gives us some breathing room.
Not ready to file yet so no report on how it will fly.

oh...NO...i wasn't saying to use zillow's pricing.....just look up actual REAL comps on the site...

they are soooooo messed up...they had our house with 2 less bedrooms...2 less bathrooms...it was a farce....so i would not use them for appraisal purposes...just to get actual comps of the area close to the address one needs.

can you believe when we refin'd in 2007 the broker told me that THEY used zillow.com for actual appraised amounts...are you kidding me??? LOL!!!!!! NO WAY!!! their facts were so far off....but...the county record or sales are also listed there...or at least we were able to find out the "recorded" sales amounts of housing equal or close to ours to bring to court with us.

[keepsmiling]

Tobee, even those can be way off. The ones my lawyer used were WAY off and way too high. Not only were they too old, but they don't take into account the condition of your house.

They are still using 2009 sales to determine my CMA online. My realtor told me they shouldn't be using anything more than 6 months old.

[tobee43]

Tobee, even those can be way off. The ones my lawyer used were WAY off and way too high. Not only were they too old, but they don't take into account the condition of your house.

They are still using 2009 sales to determine my CMA online. My realtor told me they shouldn't be using anything more than 6 months old.

oh...no...ours had dates of sales on them...so they were "current'...haha...the MOST current possible that is or was at the time.

and yes, i'm certain that they also can be incorrect, however, i think the OP was just asking what was acceptable...our copies of the sales were fine with the trustee...or at least she had no questions about the house value based on the information we provided her...just like she didn't question our internet value of our car on kelly's blue book...

but personally i think zillow.com is a mess of misinformation!