We received our appraisal this week and I'm very pleased with it. I was a
bit concerned because it seems like some people have had issues, but we were
very light on upgrades so I figured we should be ok. The value came in higher
than our purchase price, which is the main positive thing. They compared us to
four other houses in the area, three of which were new construction. They start
off with square footage and lot size to get a base price, then they adjust based on upgrades, condition/age of the house and things like that. Taking into
consideration all of those things, our house was the best value compared
with the four others listed on our appraisal. I feel good that all of my
"negotiating" with our SR actually did pay off. Although I would have liked to
have paid less (wouldn't we all?), I do think we got a good price, especially
since this house met most of our major qualifications of what we wanted in a
house.
The other happy surprise from our appraisal was that our house is 3,544 square feet. For some reason I thought it was only going to be about
3,000. The square footage is based on all living space above grade (I imagine
if you had a finished basement, they would include that too). Here's the
breakdown for our house:
 |
| He actually gave us an extra 10 sf because the two-story foyer area should have only been counted once. |
We have submitted all of our updated information to NVR and our loan processor is supposed to be sending everything to underwriting today. Hopefully there are no surprises. I have to say that so far I have been very
pleased with our service from NVR. Of course, the whole mortgage application
process is very tedious, but
that's going to happen with any company since the mortgage crisis a few years
ago. I do wish they gave us more upfront information (i.e. warned us that we'd
have to provide documentation for any deposit over $1,000), but both our LO and
our LP were always very responsive, polite and patient with my inquisitive
nature. I probably shouldn't jump the gun since we're not in the clear just
yet, but I like to give credit when someone does their job well... I certainly
do enough complaining when they don't! :)
I'm glad the appraisal went well!
ReplyDeleteOur appraisal didn't include upgrades. As a matter of fact, the appraiser came out just after the drywall was installed. The house was completely empty! That's probably why other bloggers have had problems. We did over $100,000 in upgrades. Our final appraisal was higher than our purchase price, but much lower than what RH said our house was worth since they gave us a ton of free upgrades.
ReplyDeleteMust have been a good day for approvals. We got ours yesterday as well (no issues). Congrats!
ReplyDeleteYour house is really moving along nicely! Congratulations on the appraisal coming in higher!
ReplyDelete