Almost good news

I haven't posted much the past almost week. I was busy trying to get caught up with my side job! But I'm all caught up now and the info has been sent off to the CPA for their quarterly review later this week.  

The Realtor came to our home yesterday afternoon and gave us her appraisal. Better than I thought! I had guessed $225,000 (zillow says $191,000) and she said $249,500. Not quite enough, yet, that we would want/need to get out of it in order to be able to move and buy something else, but a lot closer than I thought we were.

We owe 169k. It was very helpful that the realtor included an estimate of seller fees/closing costs, as I really had no idea how much all that would be. I didn't realize there would be an excise tax to pay to the state of 1.8%. I don't know if that is because this is a manufactured home or if that is on all types of home sales.

Also, one thing I am wondering (in looking at this, after she left) is the realtor fees. I had always thought I heard that it was 6% on the first 100k and then 3% on the amount over that. She has it listed as 6% on the full sales price. That would make a difference of $4500 from my estimate, which is quite a bit. Anyone know what is standard? 

She said we "have a beautiful piece of property - everything is just immaculate". That was nice to hear - even with our ugly, mostly dead lawn, from this summer's drought. Our big garage/shop will be the selling point - it is what a lot of people are looking for and hard to find. We also explained the drug dealers issue. She said we are not required to disclose this, it is the buyers responsibility to do their own research. That kind of surprised me, especially in this day and age of lawsuits. In talking later, both dh and I said we would feel guilty not letting someone know. I guess that is something we will have to work through....we are too honest.


DH was disappointed (as I knew he would be) because he had this expectation that it would be worth a lot more (he still does), but like I told him - we can at least take out the positive from this that we now have equity! A year ago we thought we were still under water and now we find out we have 80k in equity. I think that is something to be happy and relieved about, for sure.

According to the "experts" home values in our area are supposed to increase 8% in 2016. That would bring us up to $270 as well as our mortgage balance down $13k (with our payments). That would put us right in the area we need/want to be to move. I think this might (if luck goes our way) be doable by the end of next summer.

If and when we decide to do this, I will also get a couple more comps from other realtors. I know from when we had to get them for our bankruptcy filing, back in 2010, that their estimates can be all over the map! We had to get 3 and they seriously were 100k apart, with one in the middle! Crazy.

In related news - the drug activity just exploded over the weekend. Who would have thought it could actually be any worse, but it is......and the cops can do absolutely nothing and 2 that were here yesterday said there is nothing they can do. Can you freaking believe that?!