Category — Videos

To give comps or not give comps? That is the question. I met up with Realtor Steve Ostrom last week and we talked about whether a real estate agent should give an appraiser “comps” or not when meeting the appraiser at the inspection. Steve talked about why he always meets the appraiser at the property and I gave some tips for interacting with appraisers around this issue. Due to HVCC, there is still some confusion over whether agents can even talk to appraisers, but they definitely can (just don’t try to pressure for a certain value). Check out the video below (or here). Let me know what you think. I’d love to hear from other agents and appraisers especially. Any questions?

NOTE: In quite a few cases the “comps” provided by real estate agents are really not all that “comparable” to the subject property. It can be valuable when agents share their market insight with appraisers, but my advice to agents is to make sure the sales really are comparable and located in the same market area. This comes back to the difference between a property that is truly competitive / comparable (“comp”) to the subject and a sale that meets a certain price level.

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

I met up with Realtor Steve Ostrom today to talk about what’s been happening in the Sacramento real estate market. Steve focuses on Roseville and Rocklin, but he also lists properties all over Sacramento. He sits on the Board of Directors at the California Association of Realtors and he really knows his stuff. Steve and I talked about inventory levels, multiple offers, distressed sales, flippers and more. The main question was, “What’s happening in the real estate market?” Watch or listen to our conversation below (or here) to get a glimpse of how the market has felt lately in the Sacramento area.

What do you think? Have you seen something similar? Why do you think inventory has been down?

By the way, this video marks the debut of my beardless look for 2012. I suppose it’s a resolution of sorts, but I decided it was time for my “distinguished” beard color to go away – at least for this year. Since shaving the gray, not one person has said, “Ryan, you really shouldn’t have done that,” so I know it was the right season to let the razor win. I know you don’t come here to hear about my face, but I just wanted to put this out there publicly so there is some internet accountability in case you see a beard creep back into my life this year.  Anyone make a similar resolution?

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

I wanted to help clarify why you should NOT pay someone to appeal your property taxes (including me) during the first two quarters of any given year in the Sacramento area. I am only talking about typical “decline in value” situations where the real estate market has gone down, yet your property taxes still look too high compared to the true value of your home. NOTE: There are other non “decline-in-value” property tax scenarios that can be addressed year round.

Two reasons to AVOID paying someone to reduce your property taxes before July:

1) Assessments are Published in June or July: The Assessor historically doesn’t publish their assessed values until the second quarter of 2012. Every year tax companies send mailers in the early part of the year promising to reduce property taxes, but how can they offer to reduce your property taxes in February or March if they don’t even know your assessed value? Moreover, the Assessor does actually review property taxes and they might catch your overassessed value and correct that before their assessments are posted. Again, why pay someone if the Assessor could potentially get it right anyway? Ultimately a company can easily claim they “helped” you when in fact the Assessor simply got your value right and would have adjusted it regardless of the “help” you received.

2) The Appeals Period is July to November: The formal period to dispute your property taxes is between July 2 to November 30 of any given year for most counties surrounding Sacramento (besides Placer, which is July 2 to mid-September). Why hire a company in March when the company cannot formally dispute your taxes until July? First see what the Assessor says your property is worth and then make a decision about whether to appeal or not once you see your property’s value. The value should be based on January 1, by the way.

Here is a video with the same information above if you wish to listen instead:

I know a post like this sounds very self-serving since I run a property tax appeal company, but this is truly about honest business and providing good tips to save money. I sincerely want property owners to not be taken advantage of as I mentioned above.

What should you do? The best case scenario is for you to wait to see how the Assessor values your property for 2012. If the value looks too high come June or July 2012, and you don’t know how to provide support to show a realistic value, then hire a reputable company to handle it for you. If you want an email reminder when property assessments in Sacramento County are released, click here to fill out the form on the sidebar and I’ll send you an email reminder so you can remember to check your property taxes come July 2012.

Was that helpful? I hope so.

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

Did you try to get a loan or sell a property but had appraisal problems? I hear all the time from real estate agents, home owners and investors about bad appraisals that killed their deals. What can you do about a “low” appraisal? Honestly, not much sometimes, but you can at least write a well-reasoned cordial letter to the lender to ask the appraiser to reconsider the value in the report based on support you offer in a brief letter. I’ve seen some clients have success with the points I explain in the video below when they legitimately do have a “low” appraisal. When I say “low” too, I’m not talking about a value that is lower than the sales price because we all know market value and price are not the same thing. I really have in mind an appraisal that is truly botched and plain bad. By the way, you can read a blog post about challenging low appraisals in case the video is not working for you.

I’d like to hear about your situation with a “low” appraisal and what you did about it. How did the appraisal impact your deal?

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

I was interviewed yesterday by Sacramento Realtor Tamara Dorris on her internet radio show to talk briefly on the nuts and bolts of FHA appraisals. With her permission, I turned the 10-minute interview into a YouTube video to further share. These are some of the basics of FHA appraisals and may give you some insight into what an FHA appraiser is looking for during an appraisal inspection. I also have quite a few FHA appraisal articles written that you can check out. Watch the video below (or here). Enjoy.

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

Might this ceiling fan be a safety issue for an FHA loan? What do you say? No biggie or an issue that’ll require repair before the loan can close? Have a look at the brief video below (or here) and let me know what you think.

If you said yes for being a safety issue called out in an FHA appraisal report, you are correct. FHA is primarily concerned that everything in a house works properly, there are no health and safety issues and there is a sense of economic longevity for the house too. Had I continued the video for a bit longer, you would’ve seen the fan shake even harder. If you don’t think it’s a safety issue, would you put your child’s bed underneath a fan like this? Probably not.

While an issue like this needs to be corrected before an FHA loan can be guaranteed, it’s really not a big-ticket item. Either the fan needs to be repaired or replaced or a cheap light fixture can be purchased and installed in its place. This is an older property and ceiling fans didn’t even exist when the property was built, so a simple light fixture is entirely reasonable in this case. This is not just my opinion either, but the Santa Ana FHA Home Ownership Center said the same thing during a recent phone conversation.

NOTE: This does not mean all wobbly ceiling fans will need to be repaired or replaced. This is where the FHA appraiser is subjective and has to use good judgment according to FHA guidelines and/or the spirit of FHA.

Let me know if you have any questions or insight. I hope this was helpful. You can see more FHA appraisal articles here.

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

I met up with a real estate investor friend today to shoot a short video of one of their current rehab projects. Housing Group Fund recently purchased a bank-owned property in the Sacramento area that had been sitting vacant for a very long time. This property actually racked up $48,000 in code enforcement fines too during the long process of foreclosure and vacancy. Anyway, here is a 30-second clip I put together to show the beginning point of the rehab process.

As shown in the video, I found the “pool cover” to be an inventive way to help avoid the safety risk of an empty pool and maybe avoid damage from skateboarding too. This cover was already on the property when it was purchased. What other ways have you seen a pool ”secured” when there is no water?

Offering appraisal services to investors is one of my favorite roles because I enjoy seeing the “before” and “after” product as well as working outside of the scope of appraisals geared toward Fannie Mae. I am not doing any appraisal-related work on this particular house, but in other cases investors will order an appraisal from my company in order to do the following: 1) Present the appraisal to the funding source to secure capital for the project; 2) Use the appraisal as a part of a federal or state rehab program (particular programs simply require an appraisal); 3) Use the appraisal for marketing purposes to include in MLS for buyers and agents (or to get an idea of the “after improved” value for listing purposes).

I hope you enjoyed the brief video. Let me know if you have any questions.

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

If you know anything about FHA loans, you’ve likely heard the phrase “health and safety”. That’s because FHA has requirements for a property to be safe and sound for occupants. I shot the video below at a recent inspection. While it may not be a “health and safety” issue if a stair railing has a tiny wobble, this rail is definitely ready to give at some point, which means it’s an obvious safety issue that needs to be addressed before the loan can close. One interesting note is that the listing agent said some of the potential buyers for this property actually backed out in light of being turned off by the wobbly staircase. So on top of being an FHA issue, it’s been somewhat of a deterrent in the market too. See a previous post if you’d like to read about the 10 most common FHA required repairs.

Any thoughts or questions?

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

It’s been an extraordinary week. I’ve been working on a community project since January and I am very pleased to have seen the effort come to a close this week as the ribbon was cut on a new neighborhood entrance sign. In short this project was really about removing a large pillar that had become a hiding place for negative activity, and in turn beautifying a neighborhood entrance.

If you want to understand what we did a bit more and how we did it, feel free to watch the video below of the ribbon cutting ceremony, and make sure to check out my friend Andy Gee’s photos of the event. It’s great to see residents come together to solve an issue and I’m very proud to have been a part of a team of doers to bring results where they were needed.

Improving a neighborhood happens when we get intentional together. It’s about placing our focus on solving problems and building relationships instead of fences. It’s about recapturing a mindset to be available to other residents in the community. So when we begin to do small things like wave to passersby, get stuck in conversation with neighbors, introduce ourselves to someone who just moved in, BBQ in the front yard, or even hang up lights during the holidays, we are adding life to the community. Sure, there will be a time and place for big projects, but most of the strength of a community is not found in big events, but in the small daily interactions we all have.

Why do you think many neighborhoods have grown more isolated over the years?

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

Realtor Doug Reynolds interviewed me a short while ago about the impact of distressed sales in a neighborhood. How do short sales and foreclosures impact the real estate market in the Sacramento area? Here are some thoughts in a one-take video interview. For specific statistics, check out “Dear Doctor, how healthy is the real estate market in Sacramento?” and “What happens to foreclosure when prices go up?” I found the data in both of these posts to be very interesting. Enjoy.

Any other insight or thoughts about the affect of distressed sales?

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

It’s been a great week of life and business, and I wanted to share one of the fun appraisals I have in my bag right now. Yes, my client gave me permission to shoot a video of this “fire house” in the Sacramento area. This one is a two-bedroom crispy critter and it’s going to need to be stripped down to the studs for a rehab project. It’s always fun to appraise houses like this. Enjoy a one-minute clip.

What do you think?

If you have any questions or Sacramento area real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs, contact me by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.

“Community Building” often feels like a buzzword, but when neighbors get intentional and begin to act on behalf of their community, it’s really powerful. Have you ever experienced that? How so?

While it might feel normal to be isolated from neighbors these days, a community is really only as strong and deep as its communication. Isolation simply does not work well for neighborhoods over the long haul no matter what the economics and demographics are for a community. This doesn’t mean we all need to be extraverted best friends, but only that a lack of communication will increase the likelihood of neighborhood decay.

This is very real to me because I believe philosophically in the ideas mentioned above, and I am also a practitioner. Last Saturday I was able to partner with residents in my neighborhood to plan a clean-up for a stretch of county-owned land near Light Rail tracks. There were 25 or so neighbors, and in just a few short hours we built a fence and spruced up a patch of land that needed some loving. The result? This cleaned-up site can now be a catalyst for pride, and is a small win for neighborhood residents, the surrounding community and even property values.

What do you think sometimes hinders residents from working together to deal with neighborhood issues?

Community Building 101: In case it might be helpful, I wrote a series called “Community Building 101″ a few years ago. If you are tinkering with the idea of how to begin to improve your neighborhood, this short mini-essay series might be relevant. Let me now what you think. Download HERE (pdf).

If you have any questions, or real estate appraisal or property tax appeal needs in the Greater Sacramento Region, contact Lundquist Appraisal by phone 916-595-3735, email, Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to posts by email.