Oops Now I’m Valuing Houses in Titahi Bay, Wellington!

The weather was awful yesterday – Sunday- which was good. I always prefer to see houses in the rain – if you like then then- you’ll love them in fine weather! Sunday is the Opoen Home day around here – if you are looking for a house – forget about having Sundays for anything but house viewing!We saw five houses in the suburb that we’re thinking of buying. None of them appealed for various reasons – but they were very useful. It allowed us to work out what the house of my obsession is worth. The house in its current condition and size is worth a lot less than I thought it was, and the vendor is asking for.Valuing  houses is not really that hard to do, and you don’t need to pay a valuer to do it for you. Basically  most of the value is in the size of the section and the size of the house, the age of the house, and the number of bedrooms. If you are looking at a 3-bedroom house – then it will cost more than a 2-bedroom house. A 1960s house is worth less than a  house built in the last 10 years. A large section is worth more than a smaller one (except it its a cliff – which is quite common in Wellington!).What a house sells for is public knowledge so any agent will give you those figures. Plus you can find quite a few of them on the Internet , even though I  tend not to pay QV’s prices  for the basic information. The council will tell you what the rateable value is – that’s a start.Even added $100k for the view and location (which is a personal rule-of-thumb for coastal property) – we’re still $50k under the “offers over” figure of $469,000The odds are the vendor won’t go for it. On the other hand weirder things have happened in real estate.This week we are leaving it alone – we’ll go to it’s first open home of the spring next Sunday – see how much interest there is in the place. Our strong feeling is that there is not much interest in 2 bedroom homes in a suburb popular with families.We have a friend who is a highly experienced agent – we’ll get her to value our current home – so we know how much money we have to play with.