Anyone else an appraiser?

There are many things to evaluate....

I meant real estate.

The same house was appraised at $25,000 and $61,000 within a few months' time. :shrug:

Where can I buy a house for 25G? I can't see being that much differance. What was your opinion of value?

It's in a not-so-good neighborhood in Baltimore. I paid $20K last year as a HUD foreclosure, but it needed some work. I rented it out but my first tenant was a junkie (unbeknownst to me) and abandoned the house with tons of junk and truck tires in the basement. The second tenant was dealing oxycontin out the basement. Finally told them they had to leave. Despite the low price, it's been a real headache and might be difficult to sell at breakeven. Finally seem to have a stable renter. Hopefully things are working out.

I live closer to DC but the same house in DC would be at least $150K. Real estate has skyrocketed down here. However, if you stick to working class neighborhoods, you can sometimes find extremely good bargains compared to the white-collar suburbs or downtown. Baltimore has had a depressed real estate market for many years, and is only coming out of it now.

If you're seriously looking for a cheap house, PM me. I might have some suggestions. If you're handy or know people who can do side work, a fixer-upper can work really well. If you can get a duplex and rent the other half, it could turn out to be almost free. On the other hand, some cities are just out of sight.

Actually, the low appraisal was from a mortgage company that really didn't want to lend me the money, and was probably using foreclosures and abandoned properties to compare against. The second was an internet appraisal from a nationwide division of Bank of America. They were probably using properties from much better streets several blocks away but didn't realize it.