The Luck of the British Isles

Chris the Realtor called me in the wee hours yesterday morning to say that our lender appraisal is in. According to Chris, a lender simply tries to appraise a house up to the purchase price (unlike the city, who has the tendency to inflate the appraised value for taxing purposes). The appraisal came back about 20% over the purchase price. This means that the appaiser couldn't stop at the purchase price because there were too many amenities in the house, forcing its worth well above the purchase price. From what I gather, this is a good thing. To put this into perspective, Chris said that he has only ever seen an appraisal come back at 10% above the purchase price, and even that was abnormal. It would be nice to say that Laura and I planned this, but in reality we just loved the house and bid at a price that we could afford.

I also learned from Chris the Realtor that property taxes will be reassessed at the purchase price of the house. I was under the impression that they would be assessed against the lender appraisal figure. I'm still not certain that he or I are correct and envision future battles with the city over the property taxes. Either way, it's nice to see the ludicrous 2008 appraisal of $680,000 come back down to Earth. I'm not sure that I could ever be comfortable living in a house that was really worth that much.