House Project: Appraisal

I'm a little disappointed. The appraisal came in at $300,000. Since the appraiser agreed with me that the land alone was worth at least twice the $55,000 we paid for it, this tells me that the $250,000 or more that we have put into improvements (septic, well, road) and building a house is now worth less than $200,000. I guess that I am going to have to assume that the appraiser is making a very conservative appraisal, because of the very thin market for houses in our area. (We are, after all, almost a half hour drive from one of the hottest housing markets in the U.S. right now.)

Anyway, that means that I can't really finance more than $240,000 without paying PMI, so I have started to transfer some money over from my brokerage account to cover the discrepancy between the construction costs and what I will be financing.

Last house project entry.