Quote:
Originally Posted by selena
I bought my house in 2005 for $6k under it's appraised value at the time. Needless to say, that has changed. 
I am and have always been current on my mortgage. However, I am probably upside down now because of the decline in value.
I know that when I got my loan, they used something called "comps" which I took to mean comparing my house to what houses of comparable worth had sold for. I am trying to figure out if I am upside down by roughly how much. But all the free online tools I am using tells me that the property is not found when I tell it to search based on address/zip.
If anyone knows about a free tool I can use to to this, I would much appreciate it. |
It depends on how much money you put down, to tell if you are upside down or not. Also, it depends grately on your area (part of the country, state, city, all t he way down to neighborhood). Generally speaking if you put down 20% 3-4 years ago you probably owe on your mortgage what the house is now worth.
Also depends on your mortgage, how many years did you do it for and what was the interest rate. If you did it for 30 years with a higher rate, you will be paying a lot more interest than principle in the beginning. If you did a low rate over 20 years for example, around year 5 half of your payment will be interest the other half will be principle. It's nice when you can get to the flipping point where more goes to principle than interest. If your note is 2K a month you know 1K of that is going into equity.
If you really want to know a ball park price on what your house is worth, contact a real-estate agent and tell them you are looking to buy (describe your house) and could they give find you listings and comps for those houses. Ask them for the comps because you want to see what houses in the area you interested in (your area) have been selling for. You will be able to see the basics of the houses, sqft, location, etc... but you wont know things like if it had formica or granite countertops, wood or carpet, etc.. if it was run down or kept up etc... If the agent gives you say 20 comps, i would take the average price per sqft from all 20. The decide how your house compares, is it average, a lot better, or worse than most of the other comps. If you feel your house is avg then go with the avg price per sqft from the comps, multiple by your total sqft and you will have a rough estimate of what your house will sell for.
What your house is worth and what it will sell for are two different things. The appraisal will tell you what its worth (that appraiser's opinion anyway I've seen it vary a good bit from one to another). The comps will show you what you can actually sell it for based off of what other people are sell. Looking at what is for sale is mainly a lot of people who are pipe dreaming thinking their house is worth that much but they will never get it ;)