Analysis in Clark County Washington

Occasionally I like to go back and look at relocation appraisals I’ve done and see how I did. You know that a relocation appraisal is an estimated of anticipated future sales price, not market value. So, these appraisals have a specific purpose to the relocation industry. A relocation company lives or dies by its decisions in buying houses. If the appraiser is badly missing the mark, the relocation company has serious problems.

I picked three reports I did in the second and third quarter of 2007. They are scattered around Clark County Washington. One is close in, near the City of Vancouver. One is suburban northwest. One is suburban northeast on small acreage. Lets see how I did.

Looking at the first one in the Minnehaha area of Vancouver, I see that I said it would sell within 120 days for about $180,000. It is a remodeled 55 year old house just under 1,000 square feet of living area on a 10,000 square foot lot. The appraisal was done in the middle of July. Looking at absorption rates for houses like the subject, near the subject it looked like there was about a three month supply of such houses. This house was listed in the latter part of July for 2% higher than my appraisal estimate and is still on the market 79 days later. There are still 41 more days left in the 120 marketing time, but the data at the time of the appraisal said the average days on the market for houses like the subject was about 70. Looks like marketing time is stretching out a bit here. We’ll see what happens.

Now lets look at the house on 2.50 acres out in Brush Prairie. It is a 17 year old, 2,800 square foot house in good condition. This house had about a 10 month supply of inventory on the market at the time of the appraisal. I am way to shy to say what my forecasting was, but I will say I think it was way too low. The difficulty with that particular time of this particular year was that the bottom was just cracking and had not yet fallen out of the market. I see that this house has been on the market for 87 days. That gives it 31 more days to stay inside the 120 day marketing time. It was priced 6% above my appraised estimate. We’ll see what happens.

Now for a look at a Felida example. This is a house that was way over priced and on the market for a while before I came along. It is a ten year old house of 2,500 square feet of living area on a quarter acre. Good neighborhood. It looked at the time of the appraisal that there was an eight month supply of this product. My appraisal was relatively conservative and received some negative comments when submitted. Someone thought I was too low in the estimate of anticipated sales price. After all, it had been on the market for a much higher price. Now the house has been on the market since its re-listing just after my appraisal, for 124 days. Boy, I thought I was doing quite a good job on that one. It is still listed as active, not pending. We’ll see what happens.

Ralph Olsen, Appraiser pwas.net

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