Appraisal

Long & Foster sets record for sales in its regionLong & Foster Real Estate Inc. reported an all-time February sales record for its five-state region with sales of $1.1 billion on 5,952 properties, an increase of 23 percent over the same month last year.The Baltimore region -- 29 offices -- was up 18 percent over February 1998 with sales of $179 million.The top sales offices in the area were Annapolis, Columbia, Greenspring, Bel Air and Eldersburg.News in BriefTerry O. Stafford, host of "All About Real Estate" on WCBM-AM 680, will lead a panel discussion on foreclosure from noon to 1 p.m. March 18 at Bibelot book store in Timonium Crossing Shopping Center, York and Timonium roads.

The vacant three-story rowhouse at 211 N. Montford Ave. was typical of many in Baltimore. Aged. Sagging. A house with problems in a struggling neighborhood. So when G. Samson Ugorji, a Baltimore appraiser, was hired to do the walk-through and to write up his report on the property's value, he was supposed to take all that into account and to assess its worth objectively.But he knew that his client, who had bought the house a month earlier for $15,000, wanted him to say it was worth $80,000.

Although the Baltimore housing market has been on the fast track, appraisers are having a tough time keeping pace and increasingly have difficulty gathering information to justify sales that are going beyond list price."

When you get right down to it, the process of appraising property really isn't that complex.But, still, many home sellers -- and buyers -- don't thoroughly understand just what an appraisal is, why it's important, or how it differs from a Realtor's home market analysis or a home inspection."

If it's rusty, dusty and came from Grandma's, it just might be an antique and this weekend you can find out what it's worth.The Shady Side Rural Heritage Society is gathering appraisers and auctioneers at the Captain Salem Avery House waterman's museum at 7: 30 p.m. tomorrow to price anything old -- from Victorian-era sugar dishes to tin signs advertising 5-cent Coca-Cola.In four years of the program at the museum, the original West River home of the 19th-century ship captain adorned with replicas of schooners and antique household items, the group has come across only a few rare finds.

THE FIRST comprehensive national database of professional appraisal information covering millions of American homes -- probably including yours -- is set to become available on the World Wide Web.Under a joint venture soon to be announced by the largest American appraisal society -- the 20,000-member Appraisal Institute -- and FNC Inc., an Internet software firm, detailed appraisal information will be available via the Web to homebuyers, sellers, Realtors, mortgage...

An East Baltimore man has filed a $100,000 suit against the city for demolishing his pre-Civil War alley house.Stanley Ali filed the suit July 16 in Baltimore Circuit Court, charging the city with trespassing and negligence in razing the house.Ali's plight was featured in a series in The Sun in April on vacant and abandoned houses.With as many as 40,000 such houses, the city has stepped up its campaign to demolish aging and decaying hulks. Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III plans to take down 1,000 houses this year and thousands more in the next few years.

The farm of Elizabeth C. "Nancy" Smith -- almost 300 acres of undeveloped land in the middle of Columbia along Route 175 -- is worth almost $8 million, according to an appraisal, but the fate of the land remains uncertain.Smith, who never married and had no children, died in February at age 82 without a will, leaving dozens of distant relatives, preservationists and developers eyeing her land.According to the appraisal by Lipman Frizzell & Mitchell of Lutherville at the request of Baltimore attorney Forrest F. Bramble Jr., who represents the land's probable heirs, if the three parcels that constitute the Smith estate are developed, more than 200 housing units could be built on the land.

The farm of Elizabeth C. "Nancy" Smith -- almost 300 acres of undeveloped land in the middle of Columbia along Route 175 -- is worth almost $8 million, according to an appraisal, but the fate of the land remains uncertain.Smith, who never married and had no children, died in February at age 82 without a will, leaving dozens of distant relatives, preservationists and developers eyeing her land.According to the appraisal by Lipman Frizzell & Mitchell of Lutherville at the request of Baltimore attorney Forrest F. Bramble Jr., who represents the land's probable heirs, if the three parcels that constitute the Smith estate are developed, more than 200 housing units could be built on the land.

LONDON -- Britain's most popular Sunday television show has no sports, no sex and no laughs. But it does have enough drama and passion to keep nearly 25 percent of the country's population hunkered down by their sets.We're talking antique appraisal."The Antiques Roadshow" is a 19-year-old British institution that provides a glimpse of a nation in love with its past -- and its old possessions. Each show follows a familiar and simple formula, with a cross-section of Britons bringing their often musty items to be appraised by a group of experts who can easily spot Regency from Victorian.

Jonathan C. "Heimi" Heimert, a real estate appraiser who earlier had been a resort cook, ended his life Sept. 21. The Morrell Park resident was 49. Born in Baltimore and raised in Towson, Mr. Heimert was a 1977 graduate of Calvert Hall College High School. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1982 from the University of Maryland, College Park. Mr. Heimert began working during high school and later in college as a prep cook and line cook at the old Shane's Restaurant in Timonium. After graduating from college, he was recruited to be a sous chef at the Maryland Club.

If you're applying for a loan to purchase a primary or secondary home, or planning to refinance, you should be aware of a little-publicized new set of federal consumer-protection rules that took effect July 30. Among key changes, the new Federal Reserve guidelines require lenders to provide you initial disclosures of your mortgage costs within three business days of your loan application. If you don't get them, you can pull the plug. The rule also prohibits lenders from collecting any fees - except a reasonable charge for checking your credit - until you've been given the loan-cost disclosures.

Tim McCarthy remembers what usually happened in the old days - just a few years ago - when a property appraisal would land on a mortgage lender's desk. "The lenders would get a two-page appraisal, they'd look at the bottom of the second page [at the estimated property value], and just say, 'Next!' " said McCarthy, who owns an appraisal company in Tinley Park, a Chicago suburb. That was when property values seemed to be going nowhere but up, and many lenders giddily presumed that the appraised worth of the collateral for the loan - the house - was a safe bet. Nowadays, chastened by the cascade of bum loans that came back to haunt them, most lenders are casting a wary eye to just about everything in an appraisal, according to McCarthy and others in the field.

When it came time for Elkton resident Brian Taylor to put his home of the past six years up for sale, he knew he would need to price it competitively to sell it in a down market. With research in hand and the assistance of a Realtor, Taylor priced the three-bedroom, 2 1/2 -bath house at $249,900, about 10 percent less than similar houses in the area. The conservative price tag worked, and after multiple showings, he quickly accepted an offer. But what worried Taylor most about the transaction moving forward was the appraisal.

State officials agreed yesterday to buy one of the largest privately owned forests left on the Eastern Shore for $14.4 million, though not without questions about whether taxpayers are paying too much to preserve land in the depressed real estate market. The Board of Public Works unanimously approved purchase of the 4,800-acre tract in Worcester County, pointing to its ecological value as a habitat for rare plants, birds and other animals. It is one of two major land preservation deals announced last month by Gov. Martin O'Malley.

The Baltimore-Washington region is better equipped than much of the nation to weather the economic downturn in commercial real estate, thanks to the proximity of federal government jobs and top universities that attract employers, according to an outlook released yesterday by the Johns Hopkins University's real estate department and a local chapter of the Appraisal Institute. Trend Watch 2008, an annual survey of about 120 regional experts in real estate, development, investment sales and business, says the federal government will continue to be a stable source of jobs, while universities will attract employers in defense, life sciences and telecommunications, helping to cushion the region's commercial real estate market and keeping property values stable for the next couple of years.

Veteran real estate appraisers have complained bitterly for years about loan officers' demands that they fudge and inflate numbers to allow mortgage deals to close. But now a California appraiser has filed suit against the country's largest thrift institution, Washington Mutual Bank, charging that she was blacklisted for refusing to provide favorable appraised values despite declining market conditions. The suit by Jennifer Wertz comes just two months after the state of New York sued an appraisal management company, First American eAppraiseIT, for allegedly giving in to pressure from Washington Mutual to inflate property values for loan applications -- thereby contributing to continuing mortgage market losses.

Dr. John Earl "Jef" Fish, a real estate appraiser who later became a chiropractor, died of cancer Saturday at his Queenstown home. He was 58. Born in Baltimore and raised in Severna Park, Dr. Fish was a 1967 graduate of Mount St. Joseph High School in Irvington and earned a bachelor's degree in 1971 from Loyola College. Dr. Fish owned and operated a successful real estate appraisal firm until 1989, when he decided to make a career change. "That's when he realized he had a passion for helping others," said his daughter, Dr. Kristin M. Mowry, also a chiropractor, who now owns and operates her father's former practice, the Healing and Wellness Center on Kent Island.

Comptroller Peter Franchot asked Queen Anne's County officials yesterday to delay settlement on an open-space deal to investigate questions about an appraisal that helped justify the $5 million purchase price. The state agreed to pay $4.6 million and Queen Anne's County agreed to contribute $400,000 for the 270-acre property. An initial appraisal pegged the land's value at $3.6 million, but a second appraisal set its value at $4.6 million. In his letter, Franchot questioned several assumptions in the second appraisal.

Ron Simmons is part of a team slogging its way from California to Chicago, one photograph at a time. As the real estate appraiser and his colleagues inch down the streets of suburban San Francisco, they pause in front of every home and take its picture. One recent day, he photographed 900 buildings in seven hours. "It was a good day," said Simmons, though he added that his feet hurt. Simmons and a half-dozen employees of his appraisal team in Antioch, Calif., have been on Northern California streets since February as part of a cross-country journey undertaken by the Zaio Corp.