I was telling a foreign friend about the upcoming appraisal on my mom’s house, and how I need the property to appraise above a certain amount. He said he didn’t understand how appraisals work in the home-buying process, so I tried to explain. Here’s what I said. <\/p>\n
“Most people in the U.S. buy homes on credit. The bank doesn’t want to loan more than the house is worth, in case they have to foreclose and sell the property. The appraisal is to ensure the bank that it’s safe to loan X amount of money for a given house. <\/p>\n
“At least that’s the story. The reality is that when a bank forecloses on a property, they let it sit for months, or even years, unoccupied, during which time the pipes freeze, burst, and flood the basement, mold grows on the walls, animals make nests in the attic, etc. <\/p>\n
“Bank foreclosure properties sell for cheap. <\/p>\n
“So I’m not really sure what the actual purpose of an appraisal is.” <\/p>\n
It seems as if the appraisal is a kind of financial fiction. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was telling a foreign friend about the upcoming appraisal on my mom’s house, and how I need the property to appraise above a certain amount. He said he didn’t understand how appraisals work in the home-buying process, so I tried to explain. Here’s what I said. “Most people in the U.S. buy homes on … Continue reading “Do home appraisals make any sense?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1587"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1589,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587\/revisions\/1589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}