Houston Real Estate, Home & Property Appraisals

I was recently sent a request to perform an appraisal on a property in the Shady Acres subdivision of Houston. At first glance, the appraisal assignment seemed easy enough, a simple purchase transaction in a well established area of the Heights. A quick search of previous sales in Shady Acres over the past 6 months confirmed that the sales price was reasonable and that everything looked kosher. However, this area of the Houston Heights abuts the White Oak Bayou waterway that runs along T.C. Jester and I knew the area along the Bayou was prone to flooding. With this is mind I decided to do a bit more research on our property. I headed over to the FEMA site to look at the flood maps for this area. Sure enough our property was directly in an “AE”, or 100 year flood plain. I knew that I now must include at least 2 sales that shared this same “negative factor” or else the lender would not accept the appraisal. (It is always considered “good practice” to include sales that have similar factors, this confirms and supports your conclusion on whether the factors affect value or not.) Read more →