Go BottomSick of getting screwed Argh
 | Iowafun
Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 955 Central Iowa 
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2006-09-28 135533
Ok, took a job near Milwaukee so we gotta move. Relocation company rules state they send out two appraisors and that I am not allowed to list the house from more than 105% of the average of the two appraisals. So the numbers come in. $255k and $260k. So that means the max I can list the place for is $270k. WTF!!
The place appraised for $242k 4 years ago. Land prices have gone up 15-20% since then. I've done a new roof, remodeled a basement room so now it's a 4 bedroom and not 3 like before (4th room is a home office complete with oak cabinets, shelf units and desk), brand new kitchen floor (laminate vs the old self stick linoleum), new Pella sliding patio door, etc. If I had known I was going to get completely screwed like this, I wouldn't have been busting my ass and spending money on finishing/fixing it up the last 2 months. If I wanted to get screwed, I would have just spent the money on a car instead or a stripper.
I just have to vent. I'm so sick of getting screwed on houses. This is the 3rd one I'm getting screwed on. Granted, not getting screwed as bad as the previous 2, but still, this place is worth at least $290-$300k. If I had known I was going to get screwed this bad, I probably would have taken one of the job offers in the area and just stayed here.
Thank you for letting me vent. It's like why do I bother if the realtors are idiots and don't know how to value a property?
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 | kwschumm
Join Date: Feb 2003 Posts: 5764 NW Oregon 
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2006-09-28 135534
I know exactly how you feel. We're 0-for-2 in the selling houses for what they're worth as well. Had a nice one in Phoenix for sale for a year in the early 90s with no bites. Nice new house in great area too. Finally had to sell it at a loss to stop making two payments. Of course a year after it sold the housing market took off. Similar story on the next one. Bought it for $160k in 91, put in about $50k in improvements (fence, outbuilding, tile upgrades to kitchen and baths, added A/C and deck) and sold it for $180k in 2000. Same story, nice home in great area and it wouldn't sell for near the appraised price. Some people make money or at least break even in the housing market but I'm convinced we never will. The solution? We're never moving again. ....
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 | Peters
Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 3034 Northern AL
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2006-09-28 135538
It many not make you feel any better but I have you both beat. Our first house in MA caught on fire and was gutted. We lost everything. Part problems with the house, which I had inspected and part the fire department. After rebuilding the house and remodeling, it was essentually a new house on a 2 acre lot on a lake in MA. We move. I carry the house for two years and get back what I had into it minus the payments for two years. Naturally if I had kept it another 6 months it would have doubled in price.
Second house in KY I do OK and actually make a little. Third house we have the house 4 months and the house is struck by lightning. We loose everything again. Naturally I have to build a new house.
As you may understand from some of my posts I am a little leary about not being able to look in the walls before I move in now. Not everyone does it the right way. ....
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 | earthwrks
Join Date: Dec 2003 Posts: 3853 Home Office in Flat Rock, Michigan
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2006-09-28 135541
Iowa, it could be worse; you could have moved to Michigan, and eventually get it foreclosed on after the plant shut down. Every cloud has a...even darker cloud inside (naw, I'm jis' trying to make feel better)
Why/how can the relocation company dictate to you what you can and can't do? I'd tell 'em to go take a flying f----. Sounds to me like the employer may have an interest or stake in the move that they don't want you to know about, or at the very least trying to control.
Are you perhaps in a contract that will allow the new biz to buy your home within a certain time frame for x dollars---and they don't want you to inflate the value if they end up buying it? ....
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 | hardwood
Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 3583 iowa
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2006-09-29 135547
Iowafun; I'm not being snoopy, but just curious. If I understand you correctly the new company you are going to work for is dictating an upper limit on the sale price of your house in Iowa. How can any employer new or old have anything to do with the price of anyones house? Frank. ....
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 | ncrunch32
Join Date: Dec 2003 Posts: 762 Kingston, NY
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2006-09-29 135551
As a follow-on to hardwood's question - have you entered into an agreement with the company where they essentially purchase your house (or guarantee the realtor some fixed amount for your house), they sell through a designated realtor, and then assist you with closing costs when you purchase another house? ....
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| Iowafun
Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 955 Central Iowa
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2006-09-29 135557
There is no purchase of the house within a designated period of time. But they set the rules since they are picking up the realtor fees. So when you factor that in, I'm notting screwed as bad. Shoot, that should save me around $15k. So I can take on a lower price because I'm not paying out 6%.
I'm definitely not getting hit like Peters. Yikes! My first house I sold for $2k less than what I paid for it. It was only a $40k house too. Then 2 years later the whole town got flooded so I guess I got lucky there. Second house I got caught in a bad housing market when the local employer cut 1,000 people including me over a period of a year. So I was able to walk away with $500 cash on that one. Forget what I put into it. That just helped it sell.
I shouldn't bitch too bad. Part of it is trying to get packed so we can move/put it on the market. My inlaws are packers/savers. So every visit they would bring boxes of my wife's stuff. So we have a whole room of these boxes and a closet of them. They all have to be moved. But my wife was going through them. So while I filled a dumpster in a week, my wife went through about 6 boxes in 2 months. Argh!!!
I swear, if my inlaws lived below a volcano and we knew it was going to erupt on such and such date and it would take the lava exactly 12 hours to get to our house because that is what it has done for the last 2,000 years, the women in that family would all die in the lava flow. The men would be standing there nodding and talking about how it was fate. They have two speeds, very slow and comatose slow.
argh!!! ....
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 | AnnBrush
Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 463 Troy OH 
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2006-09-29 135563
Here are some of my observations please take note that this may not apply to any of you.
A house is worth only what someone else will pay for it. I see plenty of examples where people think that someone else should pay way too much extra for their hard work when houses are modernized or updated. In general unless the house has some really unique features (like a indoor pool for example), I ask myself what kind of house could I get if I were to pay this amount for a brand new house vs. what the current home owner is asking. IMO refurbishment of kitchens and baths etc do not increase the value of the house by a large amount - a house is EXPECTED to have a kitchen with floors and a bath etc. In general the refurbishment does not replace the old equipment with stuff that is classes above what was there before it's merely refurbished with equipment that is new. For example while a kitchen may have gone from linoleum to hardwood, it did not go from linoleum to marble, at one point linoleum was fashionable, people put it in over hardwood. That does not make the hardwood floors intrinsically more valuble than linoleum. Adding a room is a different story, although often it's done in a basement, in which case it will always be a room in a converted basement.
It's the age old story sellers think their goods are worth more, buyers will only pay what it's actually worth - Ebay is full of many such examples. I also had a recent trip back to earth when my house was appraised at x and I thought it should have been x plus, but I have an emmotional attachment to the house and think that should be worth something extra - buyers of course couldn't care less. ....
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| Iowafun
Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 955 Central Iowa
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2006-09-29 135576
Ann, you do bring up a good point. However, the kitchen floor was worth it since I did the labor. The old linoleum had it's printed surface coming off. So that would have detracted significantly.
Part of the problem is I am getting hit with the fallout of the Maytag closure. Even though I am 15 miles from Newton, the depressed housing prices are starting to take effect out here.
It is what it is. I need to take solace in the work I have done should help it sell quickly since a new owner can move in and not relaly have to do a darn thing if they don't want too. ....
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