Thank you everyone for participating in the Sacramento Appraisal Blog’s first blog contest. The grand prize was a $125.00 Residential Natural Hazard & Tax Disclosure Report compliments of www.GeoAssurance.com. I appreciate all who entered by commenting on THIS blog post (or tweeting the post). Please see the 40 second video below to see who won. Thanks again everyone and thank you to GeoAssurance for being a great sport about supporting this contest and providing the prize!!!
Pony Express Monument in Rancho Cordova: Photos from the Field
If you didn’t know, the city of Rancho Cordova is home to several stellar monuments. Between appraisal inspections today I snapped the following images of a Pony Express memorial on Folsom Boulevard next to the Valero gas station on Dawes. This historic monument is an important piece of local history, yet it’s quite easy to miss because of its location in front of a vacant lot and next to commercial properties (gas station and Rosie’s Country Kitchen).
Does anyone know how many other Pony Express monuments there are in Rancho Cordova? And where are they located? What other tributes to history can one find in Rancho Cordova? Let’s see who knows local history.
City of Fairfield Recent Sales and Pendings
Here is a quick trend graph for you of all sales in the city of Fairfield over the past 12 months (red dots) as well as all current pendings (blue dots). What do you notice? Does anything stand out to you? Can you decipher any citywide trends based on this scatter graph? By the way, the unemployment rate in Fairfield as of November 2009 is 13.1%.
I know citywide graphs are not as descriptive as neighborhood-specific graphs or even if we looked at a specific square footage or age range in Fairfield. Just take the graph above for what it’s worth. It’s interesting to see six of the highest sales of the year over the past six months. Does it seem too that the lowest end of the market is a tad higher than the lowest point during the beginning of the year?
www.SacramentoAppraisalBlog.comCity of Fairfield Recent Sales and Pendings
An Unknown Blackish-Greenish Substance
What is the substance in the pictures below? How would you describe it if you were telling a friend about the images? Have you ever encountered a property like this before? If you are a real estate agent, have you sold something similar? If you were planning to purchase a fixer-upper in the Sacramento Region (or elsewhere), would a blackish-greenish substance like this deter you from entering contract?
When appraisers come across issues like this, one would think we’d simply call the substance “mold”, but that’s not the case. The truth is that since a real estate appraiser is not a fungus or mold specialist, it’s important to not speak definitively about something that another licensed professional should be the expert on. Moreover, what if the substance was not just mold caused by excessive moisture damage, but “toxic mold”?
So what do appraisers say when encountering properties with an issue like this? Well, until we get clarification or a definitive pronouncement from a licensed mold professional, we simply describe the substance in words similar to “an unknown blackish-greenish substance”. When we do find out what the substance is, then we can better determine the impact on market value depending on cost-to-cure and the reaction in the marketplace to the existence of such a substance.
On Fannie Mae’s 1004 Appraisal Form, real estate appraisers are asked to identify any physical deficiencies or adverse conditions that might affect the livability, soundness or structural integrity of a property. The blackish-greenish substance in the photos above might potentially impact livability, right?
For further reading on mold, see the following links. You are welcome to suggest a link or share a story below too. Thank you to an appraiser colleague who provided these images to me out of his work file.
Mold Links:
www.SacramentoAppraisalBlog.com An Unknown Blackish-Greenish Substance