Think Price Doesn’t Matter?

This is a screenshot of the last 24 hours of activity in the New River Valley real estate market:

Rapattoni MLS XenApp

Pretty common numbers for the fall, overall, but the one that stands out is the “Expireds“. An expired property is one that doesn’t sell during the listing period, and, well, “expires”. In a lot of cases, the property just goes back on the market, but this number jumped out at me because it’s so much higher than we’d typically expect to see. In fact, on the last day of August, we saw 35 properties expire – the month prior, 31. So to have 81 properties expire on one day is somewhat unusual.

Why do these properties expire? A lot of reasons – it could be that it’s a piece of land, or a commercial property, which has a smaller subset of buyers in our area than residential properties. Maybe it’s a product where there’s a lot of competition (i.e. Christiansburg townhomes). But to really get your property to stand out in a crowded market, make sure it’s priced right. The rules in 2007 don’t apply, and just because you need the cash doesn’t mean the value goes up to compensate. Price matters … or else we’ll see these expired numbers continue to rise.

And for the record, I had a listing in this grouping yesterday. I need to improve on that.

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Jeremy
Lisa, let me make sure I understand the question. What you're asking is, "how much more - or less - should I expect to get above or below the tax assessed value?".

If that's the right way to phrase it, here's my answer:

There isn't, there's no apples to apples correlation. Interesting timing, since I talked with someone about this exact same scenario. In my experience, there's no correlation between market value (what someone's willing to pay) and assessed value (what a drive-by contractor has said it's likely worth). As I'm sure you know, when a municipality does a reassessment they hire a contractor group to drive around the neighborhoods and assign a value to each home. Once in a while they'll get out of the car and actually go up to the house, but the vast majority of the time they stay in the car, rocking to Enya and marking down values. I lived in a townhouse that shot up in value, yet my neighbor - with the exact same floor plan just reversed - saw a moderate increase. The only exterior difference was we put a flower bed in the front, yet we saw a nearly 25% jump in assessed value while my neighbor saw a 10% jump in assessed value, and neither increase brought us close to a similar dollar amount.

I wish it were as easy as saying "if the assessed value is $200000, multiple that by 1.24 and you've got the market value", but unfortunately it's not that simple. Every apple is different, the best way to determine market value is to have an appraiser do a full-blown appraisal ( ~ $300), or have an agent do an Opinion of Value (not $300).

Lisa
I have a question. Before getting the appraiser and assuming you do not do much to the home, is there a formula you can use to figure the value of your home based on tax assessment?