Back in February, we sent comparables to our sellers to make sure that we were still on target with all of our prices, because as we know, price is the name of the game in this market.
Since then, we put one of our listings under contract. The contract price fell between our high price per square foot and average price per square foot on those comps we did.
We just learned that the property did not appraise at the contract price, so we have gone back to reflect on the comparables that we were using. The reality is that when you do comps today, you lose some of the stronger sales that we had on those February comps – those that took place 8 months ago. The sales prices that we’ve had since then are bringing prices down a little bit and affecting our appraisals.
We have since talked to the appraiser and he has agreed to remove one of the houses he used as it isn’t a real comp – we are finding one more apropos for this property. And hopefully we can get this appraisal up…
We are running into this a lot these days – appraisals are not an exact science and they are very subjective, so more and more we have to work with the appraisers to help them get us the results we need.
