Your New Property

The comparable sales method is the most important valuation approach in the appraisal. The appraiser will evaluate your home against other properties that have recently sold in the same neighborhood. Each home is worth what a buyer is willing to pay and a seller is willing to accept.

Appraisers will attempt to weigh all of the major features of these properties based on industry guidelines (i.e., design, square footage, number of rooms, lot size, age, etc.) to the components of your home to come up with an estimated value of your home. Based on how each comparable sale compares (better or worse) with your property, the appraiser adjusts the price accordingly.

Additionally, the appraiser can estimate the cost of replacing the property. Replacement cost is determined by valuing an empty lot and taking its size and construction into account. The appraiser will then apply an age factor to the value to compensate for depreciation and deterioration.

If your property is to be used as a rental property, or if it has multiple units, the appraiser also considers the potential rental income derived from the property in order to help determine its value.

We'll also verify that your property's value supports your loan request, along with ensuring that your home is as marketable as others in the area. We want to be confident your home would be as easy to sell as other homes in the region if you decided to sell your home.

A manufactured home must meet the following requirements to qualify for one of our loan programs:

1. A manufactured home is any dwelling built on a permanent chassis and attached to a permanent foundation system.
2. Be a single-family residence legally classified as real estate.
3. The towing hitch, wheels, and axles must be removed and the home must be permanently attached to a foundation system that meets state and local codes, as well as the manufacturer's requirements.
4. Foundation system must be appropriate for the soil conditions for the site and meet local and state codes.
5. You must own the land on which the manufactured home is situated. We do not provide financing for manufactured homes located on rented or leased land.
6. Must be built in compliance with the Federal Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards established June 15, 1976. Generally, compliance with these standards will be evidenced by the presence of a HUD Data Plate that is affixed near the main electrical panel of the home or in another readily accessible and visible location.
7. Must be at least double-width, 24 feet wide, and have a minimum 600 square feet of gross living area. Must be acceptable to typical purchasers in the market area.

We define manufactured homes as housing units manufactured with a steel undercarriage that remains a structural component of the unit’s structure and limiting the structure to a single-story floor plan. Manufactured homes are sometimes called mobile homes.

We do not consider other factory-built housing (not built on a permanent framework), such as modular, prefabricated, panelized, or sectional housing, as manufactured housing. If your home falls under one of these categories, please indicate that you live in a single family home on the application.

Although we do not anticipate that you will default on your loan and that a forced sale will be required, as your lender, we'll need to make sure that if a forced sale is needed, it will not be difficult to find another buyer. When we review your appraisal, we will take several steps to verify your home is marketable:

• Compare the features of your home and compare to others in your neighborhood
• Ensure the value of your home is in the same range as others in the area
• Review market statistics about your neighborhood

If you are refinancing, and an interior inspection of the home is necessary, the appraiser should contact you to schedule a viewing appointment. Please inform your lender if you have not heard from the appraiser within seven days of the order date. If you are purchasing a new home, the appraiser will contact the real estate agent, if you are using one, or the seller to schedule an appointment to view the home. We will provide you with a copy of any appraisal, even if your loan does not close.

Appraisals are performed by licensed appraisers who are familiar with the local market values. We order the appraisal as soon as the application deposit is paid. Generally, it takes 10-14 days before the appraiser sends us the written report.

In many cases, a condominium located in a development that is still under construction will have to be completed before we can provide financing for the condominium. The main reason for this is, until the project is complete, we can't be certain that the remaining units will be of the same quality as the existing units. This could affect the marketability of your home.

Future marketability would be affected by this as well, as many would prefer to live in a project with homeowners rather than renters.

We'll also carefully review the appraisal to insure that it includes comparable sales of properties within the project, as well as some from outside the project. We have learned that comparing comparable sales from both the same project and other projects gives us a better idea of the condominium project's marketability.

Another item we will review is the condominium association budget. The association should designate 10 percent of their annual fees to be set aside as reserves for future large projects. When the associations do not place enough reserves aside and a large project is required for new roofs, parking lots, major painting, etc., and then they vote to implement a special assessment. Owners of the property are paying Special Assessments when they should have been distributed fairly to the previous owners over the life of the property.

Depending on the percentage of the property's value you'd like to finance, we may need to review other items as well.