September 4, 2015
We get many questions about appraisals, valuation and related issues. Many of the questions that come to us in the comments section come from home buyers, but a few come from those who want to sell the house they purchased with an FHA mortgage loan.
One recent question in that area came from a reader who wanted to know what the best way to repair cracks in a basement wall might be, and whether or not the home should be put up for sale before the repair process was completed.
The only way we can respond to questions like that is to say that it’s outside the scope of what we write about on this blog, but those looking for answers to questions in cases like these won’t be satisfied by that. With that in mind there is one piece of advice we can offer that may prove to be a big help for home sellers who face similar issues.
That advice? Talk to a real estate expert in your local housing market to see if the expert has any knowledge of house sales with similar conditions and what it took to make the sale or get the home ready to sell.
You may find real estate professionals in your area have a wide range of encounters with properties that may be less than perfect. There are so many factors that can affect the sale of the property you bought with your FHA home loan, including state law, building codes, and simple market preferences. In some housing markets, a seeming liability may not be affected by building code, or the seller and buyer may be able to work out an arrangement to correct a problem to everyone’s mutual benefit.
In some cases, such as with a borrower who wants to purchase a home discounted as a fixer-upper, certain issues may be a matter of re-negotiating the sales price, assuming the home passes the appraisal. But it’s difficult to say in a general way what may work and what might not. It all depends on circumstances.
Do you work in residential real estate? You should know about the free tool offered by FHA.com. It’s designed especially for real estate websites–a widget that displays FHA loan limits for the counties serviced by those websites.
It is easy to spend a few seconds customizing the state, counties, and widget size for the tool; you can copy the code and paste it into your website with ease. Get yours today: http://www.fha.com/fha_loan_limits_widget
Joe Wallace has been specializing in military and personal finance topics since 1995. His work has appeared on Air Force Television News, The Pentagon Channel, ABC and a variety of print and online publications. He is a 13-year Air Force veteran and a member of the Air Force Public Affairs Alumni Association. He was Managing editor for www.valoans.com for (8) years and is currently the Associate Editor for FHANewsblog.com.
Browse by Date: