House value help

[boiler717]

Now that more houses are closing in our neighborhood, many of which are smaller but are more expensive than ours, and they've increased the base price on new houses considerably, I'm trying to figure out if the value of our house has changed to see if we should refi. Does anyone have any tips or know how to calculate?

[kaylie]

Are there any that are the same size as yours (or within ~250 square feet) that are also new construction? Ideally it should be in your neighborhood but if there are any within a mile or so those could probably be used as comps as well. I've been keeping track of our comps because I want to refi as well, but I haven't seen any yet this year that are close enough.

[boiler717]

May 10, 2013 12:08:10 GMT -5 kaylie said:

Are there any that are the same size as yours (or within ~250 square feet) that are also new construction? Ideally it should be in your neighborhood but if there are any within a mile or so those could probably be used as comps as well. I've been keeping track of our comps because I want to refi as well, but I haven't seen any yet this year that are close enough.

Everything in our neighborhood is new construction. The house across the street and another two doors down are very similar floor plans, although we have an extra room and slightly larger rooms, making our above grade square footage about 600 sq ft larger. However, both have basic finished basements (drywall and carpet) which are agent said adds about $10-15k in value over our house. One house has no price info, but the other just closed for $17k more than what we paid. I'm wondering if I can subtract $15k from their closing price (since they have a finished basement), divide by their square footage to get their price per sq feet and then multiply by our square footage to get an equivalent price for us?

[boiler717]

I should add, we have a different builder than everyone else which makes it tough. No one else is going to have our exact house or type of finishes.

[kaylie]

If you do the equation above, do you get a number that sounds realistic to you? It sounds reasonable, but then again I've heard enough crazy appraisal stories that who knows how it would actually work out.

[boiler717]

May 10, 2013 12:36:34 GMT -5 kaylie said:

If you do the equation above, do you get a number that sounds realistic to you? It sounds reasonable, but then again I've heard enough crazy appraisal stories that who knows how it would actually work out.

No, that would mean that the value of our house has increase by a lot. Even taking off the $15k, they paid about $30 a sq foot more than we did.