If you want to get an idea of values for homes of the same type in the neighborhood, talk to a local real estate agent or two. RE agents will do a competitive price analysis, and look at comps in your area. Be honest with the agents, you are not planning on selling your house now, but you'll certainly recommend the agent to friends and keep them in mind when the time comes for you to sell or buy property. At least you will be prepared before you start the re-fi process. If your current mortgage is not less than 80% of the value of your home, I probably wouldn't even start a re-fi.

We had nothing to lose (no out of pocket costs or anything) to have the bank request a review of the appraisal. We had to provide the bank with at least 3 additional comps in our neighborhood that sold in the last 6 months, ideally 3 months (I provided 5 or 6). We had to include in our letter, as completely as possible, any errors we found. Well, our appraisal evaluation came back (took about 1 month instead of the 3 days the first one took). He raised our valuation by 40,000. Which puts it to within 5000 of what I had told the bank I thought it was worth based on an appraisal from 2009. I am shocked, but very thankful. We will sign all our documents in the next week.

The bank (and most buyers) will look at the appraised value and appraisers are being VERY conservative right now. I looked at over 100 houses in the same area and came away with a very good idea of the local prices - both asking and selling. So when we put an offer on our 1st choice in September I was confident that it was a fair and reasonable offer. Not so, said the appraiser. Not so said our lender. Appraisal came in $9,000 lower than our offer! Buyer would not budge on price even when we offered to split the difference, appraiser would not budge on his value, and we were not willing to pay our 20% down PLUS the extra $9k. So off to find another house - 2nd house we decided to make a low offer, in early October - still the appraisal (using another appraiser this time) came in only $100 over our offer. The 'declining market value' is what made the appraisals so low - this is the % the appraiser feels the market is declining and deducts from the value of the homes already sold. ie: comparable homes sold for $100,000 but market is declining by 5%, so this house you want to buy for $100k is only worth $95k. If you ask me, it's a pretty random % based upon 'gut feeling' (aka the appraisers 'valuable experience'). Right now banks want to take no chances when it comes their collateral. Btw, that 1st house is still on the market - over 4 months now. That low appraisal and their unwillingness to budge on price is preventing a sale. They will never get an offer higher than ours ($4,500 over appraisal), at least not until the housing markets stabilize and begin growing again. (Btw, one of the comps used in the 1st appraisal was a home I'd looked at, same sqf, same number of bedrooms, etc. except that it was not updated and was real UGLY. Didn't matter to the appraiser that the house being appraised was completely and beautifully remodeled - he still compared it to this butt ugly house that had random pieces of tile everywhere, including the kitchen and bathroom ceilings!).

No, $415 has not sold. But there was another house at just about that price that sold recently, and it was similar in condition and upgrade status to $415, but had air conditioning. (Which is why I think both $415 and $380 are overpriced) But I think the main thing with $380 is the negativity of the feedback overall. She knew the owners of the sold house and knows somehow that the feedback on $415 have not been as consistently negative. In other words it seems that, although they got/get a certain amount of "not interested" in the final analysis, they at least are getting some positive feedback on pricing and how it shows. I know the bottom line is getting the house sold and getting people to check the box that says "yes, interested" (and following though). But it was very helpful to me as a seller (who got a year +'s worth of "not interested" ) --to get feedback that said shows:"excellent" and priced: "just right" consistently enough to know that there were other factors involved. I think she is having trouble dealing with how bad a lot of house hunters apparently think this property is. She said to me that "they can *see what it looks like in the pictures and they can *read the listing, if they think it is so terrible why are they wasting their time?" I think this is a good question, and I think that what they are doing is looking at every house like this in the neighborhood and comparing them all. They may not be paying that much attention to those listing pictures. For example, my listing clearly stated that it was 2BR and 1 Bath and that there was an elevator in the building but you had to look for it. It also explicitly explained the condo fees. There was a LOT of feedback that it would be perfect but they wanted a powder room or another room like a den, that there was No Elevator, and that the condo fees were too high. --So why were they looking? Why were they missing the elevator (we put signs up eventually), and why were they missing the condo fees? I think because they were looking at Everything that met a general criteria rather than specific properties.