Appraisers' Free Forum

Folks, I am finishing up one right now and the realtor has made a mistake, out of laziness, and it is one of my pet peeves. They did not measure the house. The area which was omitted is 10%. It is only 130 square feet because the home is small roughly 1,300 square feet. It really hacks me. The marketing time of this home was roughly 6 months more than usual and I can't help but believe it is related to the lack of measurement. I'm not the appraiser or realtor police. I would do a courtesy call to them, if they weren't as populated as rabbits taking viagra/horny goatweed cocktails. I don't think it's anywhere in my scope to call it to anyone's attention, unless the underwriter asks why it is appraising for more than the contract price. At any rate, what would you all do to slow these lazy half assed realtors down? The only thing I can think of is to take a shot at all of them, via an article in the local newspaper, explaining that damages can occur if a listing agent does not measure a house. The seller has been screwed out of not only $5,000 to $10,000 dollars, they have been screwed out of a faster marketing period. It has been almost one year on the market and less than 6 months is the norm. I guess I'll actually have to mention some of this in the report.

Any thoughts on educating the public and the realtors? Homeowners in my area are being damaged. This very well could be wide spread enough to where it could be a niche appraisal market in my area for litigation. However, if you alienate the realtors too bad, they will make sure the mortgage lenders cut you off, sad as that may be.

Realtors measure houses by you? Around here you're lucky if they actually measure the room dimensions on their own. Most of them just copy them from an old listing. We almost never get GLA or anything similar on the listings.

Any local news article could expose you to suits by the NAR or the local association, especially if you use the term REALTOR® in it. I'd be mighty careful of the tone taken. You could slant it from the perspective of helping HO's get the most out of their house:

Tip #1, accurately measure your house so you know what you're selling. Measure from the outside, and leave out the garage/carport, porches, and unheated utility rooms.

I know of one house which was mismeasured by over 10%. In my opinion, this caused the house to languish on the market far longer than it should have.

And so on..

Skibs, some do, so do not. More often than not, they will indicate the size as being "XYZ SF" taken from "Tax Records". Last time I knew, the employees and the elected assessor did not have much in the way of liability or even motivation to make sure the record is accurate, which would seem to put the liability on a selling agent, if there are damages from not taking a measurement as a result of a property selling too low, or having too long of a marketing period.

Unless it is written somewhere that the agents must measure the property, I'd say there is nothing you can do, as long as they disclose where they got the information.
Around here, none of them attach square footage in the majority of the listings. I'd still measure it myself, just to ensure that it was properly done.
I've seen measurements from appraisers with years of experience and they simply don't remove two story rooms from their measurements.

I have one about like that. I sold a house last year... was in partnership with my brother and his wife set the deal with the real estate agent. Now this agent truely is one of the best around here, but they all make mistakes.

When she called me in to sign, I was surprised that the offer (my brother had alread accepted) was so low. I started looking at her stuff and something did not look right. She had the house as 1100 sq. ft. and it was really about 1300... the shape was wrong.

Well, I threw a fit, but the house was a difficult marketing project and my brother was hot to get out of it. Somehow, the agent managed to get a small increase from the buyer and I went along with the deal.

Sheesh. She missed the size by more than fifteen percent and missed the price by almost that much. Next time I need to pay closer attention.

Who cares what they write? They round to the nearest thousand, count anything without wheels. And to top it off their MLS templates are set up to deflect liability from themselves.

Around here there is a pocket of ignoramuses who use all the sneaky tricks to keep their copyrighted brethren from even showing their listings. We just went to a statewide MLS so their stuff instead of getting picked up by greater numbers, is getting lost in the transition. Tricks like accidentally on purpose getting the town wrong--by a lot--so the listing doesn't show up where anyone would recognize it. Or putting no comments, or putting a zero where a year built or total room count figure should go so it gets lost in a query.They are starting to feel the squeeze financially, so their stupid tricks will increase.

An anudda ting...

They can't measure, they don't know one style from another, but what about pricing? They are not saving their talents for that. I got an order from a long-time client for starter buyers, a purchase in a modest mill village. One look at the listing and I could not believe the list price. Then the style was not even close. It was an arts and crafts cape but the agent put Farmhouse. So I look at the name of the list agency and it is from the swanky shoreline. Things are bad when they work out of their market.

So I ask the list agent why she thought it was a Farmhouse and she "That's what the last agent had written." But she will be cashing a check with her own name on it, won't she?

The property was listed for something like 289,900 and the offer was like 265,000 and I came in around 210,000, which is what it sold for. I don't know how the buyer agent could cash her own check and she was an old bird too so she should have learned something over the years. I later asked the list agent how she "devised her pricing strategy" and she said first purchase price + updates + credit card debt. I could not ask the buyer agent want she used for a CMA for her buyers since the sales had to be on another planet. I am not feeling very charitable towards them today....they'll be calling for their realtor pin back any minute.

And the worst part is they market themselves so well, their customers never know how mistreated they are, so they recommend them to the next victim.

You cannot be serious? A real estate agent measuring a house, you have got to be kidding me! Their heels might get stuck in the mud or heaven forbid, they could snag their pantyhose or get a stain on their tie. I have no idea why you would expect such a thing out of a professional tour guide in the first place. (Yes there is a lot of tongue in cheek / buckshot in my post).

Thanks

Local board meeting recently had an appraiser as a "guest' speaker. He told agents they should measure house and why--all but 2 got up and left the room!

Bill Caudell wrote:Local board meeting recently had an appraiser as a "guest' speaker. He told agents they should measure house and why--all but 2 got up and left the room!

Welcome to the real world of real estate! BTW, there are some older threads you could bring back to life.

Realtors measure houses ?

I don't know one that owns a tape measure...