San Diego Market and Zillow

[Mugsy]

Try this:

SDLookup.com | San Diego Real Estate & Homes for Sale

[earlyretirement]

Before you pull the trigger on the refinancing, give Sheldon a call. I have had several friends use him and were very happy with him.

San Diego County Mortgage Professional : 760-419-5450

[shmoov_groovzsd]

Going to echo everyone else here. The Zestimates are really only starting points and NEVER use the averaged number they throw you. Make sure to look and see how the variance is in that Zestimate to get a better gauge. I would say its safe to go on the higher side if your home has great curb appeal and or some other offsetting factors that dont get entered into the Zestimate equation.

As a tech nerd, when trying to create a formula for something like this Zestimate its incredibly difficult. Most notably because of the comps in some areas where there may be distressed sales, homes in crappy/excellent condition that may fit the dry metrics. So you may live in an older suburbia for example where home dimensions are roughly the same but the condition of the homes sold as comps can vary wildly. Zestimates dont really calculate for curb appeal either per so or location. It does, but I dont think there is much emphasis used in its formula. Its mostly the dry facts that fit the little drop down menus.
In a place like SD, this kind of blanket formula used across the country doesnt yield particularly accurate results. But then again, appraising is not really a perfect system either.
The only person you should be caring about is the appraiser or getting a more accurate appraisal from a person that knows the market.

[hitman619]

Right as usual Shmoov!
Zillow has My next door neighbors house appraised at 20k higher than my house.My house has 800 more Sq,Vinyl siding, and a bigger drive way. My Neighbors are in there 70's.Their house although nice is not up to Neighborhood standards anymore.
I've offered to have my son mow there lawn for cheap but no dice.

[malcorub16]

Thank you to every one who responded to my personal situation which triggered this post as well as Zillow estimate. I feel the appraiser undervalued my 3000 SQ FT 5 bedroom home on a half acre of land and that the mortgage broker leveraged that to ask for more money. Especially when looking at some of these comps that the appraiser provided that sold about 500K.

Before cutting this guy loose, I am going to see if I can negotiate a lower fee.

[NorthSDLifer]

We just noticed it shot up our home value by $35K since we last looked to $442K, which I guess is based on a neighbor's place closing last month. IIRC, Zillow had our place at $320ish when it was appraised for refi at $360K (which was also our purchase price; three years prior it went for $533K).

[thelopez2]

Originally Posted by malcorub16

We are working with a private mortgage planner who's name I will not mention. The deal he is getting us from the lender will save us well over $100K in interest over the lifetime of the loan. The fee for refinancing was initially supposed to be $2000 but under the impression that our home was valued at $500K or more, but now that the appraiser has come out and undervalued our home to that amount, suddenly the mortgage planner is asking for a $3 thousand more due to the loan to value ratio not being as high as we initially thought.

Do you suppose the appraiser could be in cahoots with the mortgage broker and purposely undervalued our home or maybe the broker is just using this as an excuse to charge us more...? Should I just see this as one time nominal investment of $5K that will save me big bucks in the long run? Maybe I am just being paranoid, either way we are set to save a ton in interest and we are getting rid of our PMI which I have always hated paying into, I just would like to keep as much as my money as possible.

Doubtful they are in cahoots , they shouldn't even know each other. In an area where you have a lot of sales, an appraisal is not rocket science. Zillow uses an algorithm which is different than appraiser. You are better off calling a real estate professional and ask them for recent sales of similar size and conditions. I don't know why your loan person didn't get this information to you a head of time, to give you an idea of your value. I think a lot of loan people don't want to put you in a position to say no early, they wait until you paid for your appraisal so you feel stuck and don't want to lose your money.

[malcorub16]

Originally Posted by thelopez2

Doubtful they are in cahoots , they shouldn't even know each other. In an area where you have a lot of sales, an appraisal is not rocket science. Zillow uses an algorithm which is different than appraiser. You are better off calling a real estate professional and ask them for recent sales of similar size and conditions. I don't know why your loan person didn't get this information to you a head of time, to give you an idea of your value. I think a lot of loan people don't want to put you in a position to say no early, they wait until you paid for your appraisal so you feel stuck and don't want to lose your money.

This is exactly how i feel right now. I can still say no, but would loose out what I paid the appraisal plus all the time spent on this over the course of the month would be wasted and we would have to start over. Could I use this same appraisal with another loan person?

So the big question is, is it worth my time for a couple of thousand of dollars. That is for me to decide of course.

[thelopez2]

Sadly this is the environment we are in. They get you to commit all this time get paperwork , jumping though hoops, getting you so tired that you just don't want to go through it again with another lender, if you fall to their mercy they won.

I tried to manage the expectation by letting borrower know how much places around them have sold. If a borrower needs a $600k appraisal and nothing has sold over $500k and there is nothing special about their place, I warn them ahead of time.

Chances are you don't want to use that appraisal with a new loan person, the value is low. Have you done any other homework other than Zillow? Are other sales pending that might help you? Even though the prime moving season has passed, we (SoCal) doesn't get the harsh winter to deter people from moving, so we still get a good chunk of transaction.

Paying $450 or whatever for you appraisal might hurt, but unnecessarily paying an extra $3000 might hurt more.

It also comes down to what is your time worth?

So what is it about the appraisal which make you feel that your house was undervalued? When you look at the adjustments they are pretty straight forward. What might hurt you is if you have the largest home in the area.

When looking at the comps, the they will also list for sale, and pending ones, but those don't hold weight. If some of those lower price comps are old, after time they'd get sale and stop hurting your value.

Presenting information to the appraiser also helps. If you give them information that smaller homes that aren't comps, 2300 sq ft are selling for $460k, then how can they say that your home is also valued $460k. Also if you've done renovation, let them know that you put money into your place.