PBC Property Assessment...Accurate? (bank owned, short sales, real estate)

[mbrrt]

Hi guys, I am looking at a house to buy. It is listed for $179k, but according to PBC Property assessor the 2010 assessment is $103K. What is the story with this? Could this be accurate? And if I put an offer, do you think the $103 is what it will be assessed at? Could it possibly be assessed at $179? Why such a big difference?

Also, as an aside, for those of you that do real estate. In this market, is there really such a thing as "offending" sellers by going in at a low price? For instance, I really want to offer ~ $140k

[TriMT7]

No. not always. For example, friends of mine just refinanced their home in West Palm. The bank ordered an appraisal, and it came back at 225k.... However, a wekk later the property appraiser gave them an estimate of about 180k.

Of course, in big gated subdivisions, it will probably be more accurate, since there will be less differentiation between the housing stock. In a place where the homes are unique in size, character and degree of upgrade (such as historic areas, or more mature neighborhoods) the property appraiser has not much more to go on besides price per square foot.

[skylinet]

The appraiser and the market value are usually off, in some cases by a lot, in some cases they are fairly close. As far as buying a home the recent comps in the neighborhood should be a better idea of what you base your offer on. Have you (or your realtor) seen similar homes in the area sell for around 140k?

Your next years tax assessment may be closer to what you actually purchase the home for.

"offending" someone in today's market is kind of complicated. Some people are just very unrealistic price wise, or in some short sale cases the agent for one reason or another hasn't priced it to the market. So offending them is more or less just bringing them to reality...

If the house is indeed priced well and you are still throwing in a way low ball offer than it might offend someone. Most well priced homes are getting good offers pretty quickly though.

[FloridaHawkeye]

The appraised market value on that site is almost always lower - not a tool to determine what the home is actually worth.

Don't worry about offending sellers especially with short sales - they either are trying to stay in the house for an x amount of time or trying to dump it asap.Now bank owned - they will rarely budge on their price via offers. You could offer 200 for a 220 listed house and they will not move but two weeks later they will lower the price to 200 on their own. But banks will work with closing costs.