I tire of the uninformed assumptions based incorrectly on personal opinion.
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The buyer wanted out of the sale, claiming that the Realtor had full knowledge of the situation and failed to inform her. The Realtor said there was no law stating he had to inform ANYONE of what he knew about the home.
This lender is still my biggest client....and....
.....I still got paid.....
Norx4us,
Thank you for posting. It's about time we had such a post versus those posts full of assumptions and probably incorrect implications of stigmas did not exist just because the appraisers did not find evidence of other sales having stigmas.
Due to this I am going to make a few unsupported assumptions myself and dubious implications just to join in with the lack of professionalism. Here they are. By the way, the below is not meant for you.
A) Too many pros on here seem to have forgotten in their posts that work they did back between the late 1990's and 2006 took place in markets that had become atypical historically because so many buyers had bought into the mindset that real estate is some sort of short term investment that only goes up in value. There were several extended periods of panic buying, competing bidding, and finally a serious shortage of inventory available almost nationwide. Now, to post in a manner that makes it sound like stigmas from murder in houses doesn't exist, because ya can't measure it or extract it out of the market in those circumstances, is seriously shortsighted from any professional viewpoint.
B) It is a fact, realtors are not required to disclose
voluntarily prior murders and deaths during any marketing or prior to any offer being made. As to if they are required to even after an offer is made may only be a state by state matter. If they get asked they are not to lie or dodge the matter by omission. They just hope not to get asked. Now then, as an appraiser I have an issue with this! What just happened to our definition of Market Value? It means any buyer that fails to ask, and so is not informed, is NOT a knowledgeable and well informed buyer taking part in the transaction.
What does this mean when we use a comparable sale that we are seeking to possibly determine any stigma reaction out of the market from? Well, it damn well means that unless we can find out IF the buyer was informed PRIOR to making any offer of deaths or murders that took place in the property, certainly if they ever got informed at all before closing, that we cannot assume a bloody darn thing regarding that comparable! More than this, just one (1) such comparable is NOT enough in any market place for any professional to be determining if the market has an adverse reaction to such events or not. It has been well documented that some such negative events, due to famous people or infamous degree of negativity, can actually make a specific property value increase. Obviously, we
cannot use a sale of such a property against some other subject property lacking any such market influencing element. It is like everything else we do, we have to keep it apples to apples and not apples to oranges.
C)... and I can't post this one loudly enough.
The nationwide market for residential real estate has changed people!!!!!!!! Take these assumptions you have left over about stigmas, from a drastically different market for real estate, and toss them out the window. Buyers are now, or VERY soon, going to have more selection of inventory than they know what to do with. I might be just so rash, but forgive me, because I think very few of them are going to accept wondering if all the brain matter actually got removed from the popcorn ceiling.
So take this advice or don't. If appraisers are wise they will bid such jobs at a much higher fee than normal and seriously do the darn research. This means also bidding a much longer turn time to allow the research. Not just to prove if a stigma exists, but to PROVE one does
not exist! If ya all move forward under some lame assumption a stigma does not exist just because data for extraction of it wasn't found in the recent few years we just went through .... do so at your own financial and license peril.
Besides. I rather suspect a few of you simply didn't try hard enough in the past anyway. Too much client pressure for low fees and turn times don't you know!
Webbed.
