So after months and months of bidding, meetings, phone calls, e-mails... blah blah... we narrowed down our options between 4 different contractors vs. building ourselves. And finally we got to appraisal time, ordered it and waited 6 weeks to get it back.
Hardly worth all of that wait!. Apparently in our County similar houses that have sold in the last 4-6 months aren't worth what it will cost to build ours! Even the bank's own cost-to-build method of appraisal came back that to build our house today from scratch would cost $60 grand more than what it actually appraises for. So off to a bad start for us, because it means that the max bank can lend us is about two thirds of what the original budget was if we went with a contractor.
So we're very discouraged. How can you cut a third off the budget WITHOUT cutting so much that you now hurt the appraisal value of the house? In the end it has to appraise for the same or more when finished. So if the appraisal was based on tile, hardwoods, granites, etc. etc. we can't now switch to linoleum and laminate to make the budget work because now we're downgrading the level of finish we used to appraise it to begin with. *sigh*
We told our final 4 what the appraised value came at and how much we need to trim our budget by to make it work. Let's say none of them sounded overly optimistic that this will happen by cutting so much. So we've sent a list of possible ways to cut and they'll work some suggestions and we'll see if we can make it work.
Until then, we wait and we pray for guidance on how to move forward.
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