Manufactured home on secondary lot

<<>> “Do you have the experience to appraise a manufactured home on a secondary lot? How long have you been appraising?” ask the real estate agent.

I appraised a home on secondary lot located outside of the city in a resort area around a lake called Diamond Lake.

The home was a doublewide located on a secondary lot. A secondary lot is a lot that is not located directly next to the water. In other words, their land does not go directly to the lake. Their lot sites back from the lake. Usually, in these types of communities, the owners will have shared access to the lake and park area and sometimes a dock and a beach area, but it will be shared with other owners and they will all pay a Home owner association to maintain this area. Now back to my story.

This home was listed on the market for two years at close to $200,000. Finally, the sellers got a bite and an offer was accepted. Now it was time for the appraisal.

A loan officer called me up and hired me to complete the appraisal. I was able to find seven comparable sales, of which two were listings on or around the same lake as the subject property. My conclusion was clear. The value of the home was much less than what the home was listed for and what the purchase agreement stated. So I appraised the home for what is was worth. I knew that the real estate agent was going to be mad, but I never allow my personal thoughts get in the way of the solid support for value. I understand that I am protecting the buyer and the lender from paying an unfair value and my main concern is that I would to create a product that I’d be proud of in court, if it came down to this.

Of course, the realtor was mad and the loan officer was mad, but there was not a thing I could have done about it, besides lie about the appraisal value. And of course, I was not going to do this.

So what happened to the deal? The deal did not go through, as the buyer did not want to put more money down on a home when the value of the home was not supported by the best comparable sales. The seller did not want to decrease the price because this is what they thought the property was worth.

The realtor sent me 15 other sales. Guess what. Clearly, it was a desperate attempt to get me to change the value. Look, I’m all for supporting sales prices and I will change the value of my appraisal, if I’m wrong and you can find me better sales that what I’ve used that actually support the value, but you or the realtor must provide better sales than what I’ve used in the report, or there is no point in sending them to the appraiser.

As I’ve stated above, I had seven comparable sales around the same lake as the subject. The realtor, on the other hand, sent me 15 sales that were miles and miles from the subject and many did not even offer any similarities to the subject in terms of a secondary lot or a manufactured home.

The realtor wanted to know if I had the experience to appraise a manufactured home on a secondary lot. Of course I did. But what I should have ask the Realtor is do you have enough experience to sell this home?