The Neighbor

I got a call from an angry guy.

“I got burned!” he said. “An appraiser came to my house and low-balled me.” The angry guy said he’d done a lot of work on his place, and the appraiser had given it no credit.

“I’m surprised he could find his way around here at all,” said the angry guy, “because he must have been blind as a bat!”

I drove up to the angry guy’s house. The outside paint was fresh; the roof appeared to be in good shape; the grass was mowed.

He swung open the front door. “Welcome to the meat and potatoes of the American Dream!” he said.

“Ha! Good one,” I said. His neighborhood was built shortly after World War Two, and many of the homes were originally sold to returning veterans, so his line about “the meat and potatoes of the American Dream” made some sense.

Unfortunately for the angry guy, appraisers not only analyze the meat and potatoes, they analyze the side dishes, too. In other words, appraisers don’t just look at the house they are appraising. They also look at the neighbors.

The guy had a bad neighbor.  That gave me an idea as to what went wrong.

I called an acquaintance at the National Appraisal Institute. “How much effect on value is a bad neighbor?” I asked.

“We refer to that as External Obsolescence, he said.

He told me he’d seen situations where External Obsolescence such as a bad neighbor lowered a property’s value by more than ten per cent.

“Does this particular neighbor demonstrate anything like an unkempt yard, annoying pets, unpleasant odors, loud music, dangerous trees, or poorly maintained exterior?” he asked.

“All of that.”

“Oh my,” he said.

I relayed this new information to the angry guy.

“You forgot one thing,” the angry guy said. “My neighbor is also a jerk!”

He wondered what he should do.

I told him the National Appraisal Institute recommends looking into possible code violations by a bad neighbor, and if necessary, hiring an attorney.

Or he could take my grandmother’s advice: “If you want a good neighbor, bake ‘em a pie.”

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Doug Love is Sales Manager at Century 21 Jeffries Lydon. Email escrowgo@aol.com, or call 530-680-0817.