During the course of a appraising, I've been in many nice houses. I get to see whatever is the hot new trend and get ideas for when I build my own house, someday. But there is another end of the spectrum. Sometimes I have to go to the dump. Last week I had a request, and in the course of setting up the appointment, I called the realtor involved to ask about access. He said, "Just push the door down and go in. Oh, and don't go alone. In fact, bring a gun." Obviously, this somewhat changed my expectations fo this inspection. I got Kensill to go with me and there was a gun in our possession. I measured while he took pictures so that we could get out of there as fast a s we could. The whole place was falling in. The structure was actually a negative factor in valueing the land. The ceilings were falling in, all the windows and doors were broken, rotten wood on the outside, holes in the walls. Kensill actually snapped a picture with the current residents: rats. I hope this one will be featured on the next episode of What You Get for the Money.
Posted by chefchuddy at August 23, 2005 06:44 PM | TrackBackI would think that appraising would help more with finding a nice how to *buy* than with getting ideas for building. I mean, look at Kensill; he didn't build his house.
I hear that building can be far more expensive than buying, but maybe I hear wrong. Regardless, I know that there are always plenty of nice local houses on the market, and it seems like you would have an advantage over John Doe in knowing about them (whereas if you both had a million dollars to work with, he still might be able to outbuild you, especially if he had the right connections and/or excelled in the fine art of practical creativity).
But it must be fun to get to see inside so many different houses on either end of the spectrum. Sounds like a win/win situation to me: one the one hand, you get to visit mansions; on the other, you have an excuse to carry a gun!
Posted by: jon at August 23, 2005 09:36 PMBuilding is definitely more expensive than buying, but building is usually the only way to get exactly what you want.
I do like getting to look at all sorts of houses. Oddly enough, I hate going to the Garden District, though. The problem is all the freakin' landscaping and fighting the jungle of shrubberies just to measure the thing.
Posted by: Aaron at August 23, 2005 11:59 PMWe put a value of $4,000 on the property. It had two lots valued at about $4,000 apiece. The final value is the land minus the cost to remove the "dwelling."
Posted by: Aaron at August 24, 2005 09:59 AMMakes you miss Union National, huh?
Posted by: Christin at August 24, 2005 09:17 PMEight thousand for two lots. That's pretty cheap. Regarding the phone call, all I can say is wow.
Posted by: Le Noir Faineant at August 27, 2005 11:11 PMI love the title of this post. It's intriguing, in a weird sort of way.
Posted by: Shannon at September 20, 2005 11:06 AM