Initial Appraisal Meeting

Well, the bank submitted all the info the appraisal group who then requests an appraisal ... from a group that they (my lender) aren't allowed to talk with directly because of all the new regs.  It was submitted on the Mar 29 and it got assigned to someone the following Monday - given the day (April's Fool), I was hoping the joke wasn't going to be on me.  On Tue, I was notified who the person was and he should be contacting me soon.  Looked him up online and it says he has been doing it for 20 years so hopefully that's a good thing.

He calls me on Wed and wants to schedule a time to look at the property.  I try and push to meet immediately because every day of no action is a day missed of build.  He says he can't meet until Monday, Apr 8.  I'm bummed that nothing else will get done this week and it means that I wont have the appraisal until probably Apr 12 at the earliest :-(

I meet with him at 10:00 and he was on time - I don't like it when people don't show up or are late (without calling).  He takes a couple pics of the road and we walk down the access drive and stop near the corner of where the workshop is going to go.  He asks a couple questions about the landscaping I'm doing since it is quite extensive - $5k in trees/plants, 100' pondless waterfeature, koi pond, 30tons of weathered limestone boulders and ledgestone (shipped from MO),

 


Here is a picture of the limestone in a water feature:

and 7tons Montana slate flagstone (Here is a picture of the stone I put in at our current house)

He asked about the well and septic location and then about the workshop.  That was it -13 minutes on site.

To be honest, I was a little concerned because he was there for such a short time and everytime I tried to ask about the process, he didn't really respond.  Perhaps he can't say but whatever.  Before he left he asked how long I would take to build ... I said "well it depends on the appraisal.  If I get a high enough one then 4-6 months, if I get a low one then perhaps 12 months or so"

Because there are no comps anywhere around the area, especially for a custom house they are expanding the range to include most of the county and the eastern part of the neighboring county.  I hope there are some good custom house prices out there.

I updated my budget to include the workshop (and some of the contractor bids for framing/foundation were higher than originally estimated) and the appraiser wanted copies of those as well.

It's out of my hands at this point.