So we are about to list our house for sale to upgrade to a new neighborhood. It seems to be more complicated selling our house than it was shopping and buying. Last year, we remodeled the house upgrading the kitchen, adding 200 extra square feet with an added on room, and removing ugly popcorn ceilings. The work that we had done has obviously made our house much more attractive than most in this neighborhood. Before having the work done we had it appraised at 209,000 for financing reasons. Which was about $111/sq. ft. This was before the improvements. So, we had another appraiser come out and he gave us a current value of $200,000 which with the new square footage comes out to about $91/sq. ft which is way below what most of the houses in this neighborhood are listed for. This is significantly lower than we expected and I am going to have another appraisal done. I understand that the market changes in two years, but I can still see what houses are going for now in our neighborhood and what they have sold for in the last 6 months, and this value seems super low. My question is that if I have a new appraisal done and it shows that this current appraisal was way off, can I ask for a refund? Also, I haven't been able to get a clear explanation of how we should list our square footage on the MLS. We added a new room that is directly connected to the house and the interior of the room fits with the interior of the rest of the house (ie. the walls are textured sheet rock and not the old exterior wall). We could not tie the A/C and heating directly into the room so have a window unit for cooling in the summer. We did not have an architect for the room either. The appraiser that came out the other counted the room toward the overall square footage. So, if our appraisal counts the square footage can that be listed on the sale information or do we have to do something else to verify the square footage?
Not sure if it's the same in Texas, but we bought a house in California six months ago. Our house was built in the '70s and a few years after it was built the owner, who was also the home builder, added a 200 sq. ft. sun room without a building permit. The sun room is completely integrated with the rest of the house, including central air/heat. You would have never known it was an addition without being told. Anyway, at the time we were buying the house, the sellers could not include the extra 200 sq. ft. in the listing because of the lack of permits. We made getting the permit a condition of sale and the sellers got it done (with a fair amount of work because the changes in code since the '70s). We could now include the extra footage when listing the house (and we'll have to pay taxes on it.)
This is true for Texas as well but the appraiser might not have asked and still added it in his/her appraisal. This will come up during an inspection though so getting a building permit after the fact might be best suited for this situation.
