Hi all… it seems to me that I’ve heard there’s a way to find out what the selling price of a particular house was the last time it sold. Maybe in county records… Does anyone know what this is?
Thanks infinitely,
Anise
Washington, DC has a website on which it lists real estate sales and tax appraisals, YMMV.
But try zillow.com.
This might have what you want: Property Assessor records: Davidson County The equivalent site in my area has selling price data.
If not, look through http://www.nashville.gov/eservices.htm, or call the information desk at city hall.
Normally the Recorder of Deeds (which may be the County Clerk or a separate office, depending on the state) will have a cover sheet to the copy of the deed conveying the property which lists seller, buyer, tax map code for the property, property name or address or other short description (Mousefoot Island/110 Elm Street/20 acres of scrub woodlot) and price paid. If you have access to the deed or abstract of the property or to a tax map showing the property, this is very easy to look up at the county records office.
The property assessor records site was the place! Y’all are wonderful human beings and will collect lots and lots of good karma, leading to eternal bliss. 
Or, well, it’s nice to give good advice. Either way, it’s all good.
So my next 2 questions are… (oh, you knew there were more!)
1.) Where would I find equivalent sites in other counties in other states? My best friend immediately started bugging me about finding out how much his parent’s home in Denver had been appraised for once I told him about this amazing thing I’d found.
2.) What kind of relationship does the appraisal generally have to what the house would actually sell for? There may be no exact answer to this question, but all opinions are appreciated.
Every county has the equivalent office. You just need to call the county and ask for it.
None. Appraisals vary for a zillion reasons. Some counties do appraisals on a regular basis. Some only do them when a house sells. Some counties peg the appraisal to the tax rate. Some don’t. Some do appraisals to some fraction.
Even inside a county, the appraisal value may not have any relationship to the actual value of the house on the open market. My house’s appraisal has hardly budged in the 20 years I’ve been living here.
There may be particular places in which appraisals do have a good relationship to selling cost. Doubtful, but possible. The person to ask about that is a local real estate agent.
I’m not sure about Denver county, but Boulder County just sent out the new appraisals this week. I have mine on my desk right now, getting ready to contest it. Good thing the county apparaiser is my next door neighbor and her kid is my daughter’s best friend.
IOW, the websites probably aren’t updated just yet.
Oh, oh! I think I may have figured it out. To some extent, at least. 
First, I looked up the asking price of a house on realtor.net, or used a value I knew from calling realtors here. Then, I looked up its appraisal value. THEN, I looked at a list of homes of similar size in the same exact neighborhood that had actually sold in the first quarter of 2007. (I’ve driven around that neighborhood so much that I have a pretty good idea of where it all is.) Then, I looked up the Davidson County property tax appraisal value of each house, and compared it to the actual selling price of each house. (The appraisals were all just done last year.) I figured the average percent difference between the appraisal value and the sales price of these houses in the same neighborhood as the houses I’m looking at now. Of course, this doesn’t take the actual condition of any individual house into consideration, but at least it’s something to go by (also, building permits can be looked up to see if a particular house had any major improvements done between appraisal time and selling time.)
I have some kind of ACTUAL INFORMATION on what houses in Nashville neighborhoods are worth!!! (Does the Happy Reasonably Well-Informed Dance.) And I never could have done it without everyone here…
The city & county of Denver has it online, try this. It worked the last time I used it.
I think it may be important to distinguish between three different kinds of “appraisal” here:
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The taxable value assigned a house by the local or regional valuation-for-tax-levy agency (presuming you live in a state where property tax is levied, by state or local municipality). This is a number whose sole purpose is to assure that you pay no more and no less than your fair share of the total tax levy for the taxing jurisdiction. Sometimes these figures are the fair market valuation of your property, sometimes they lag many years back. They are updated when the tax appraiser gets around to it – which may be quickly and responsively to changes, or may be done a small segment of the taxable jurisdction at a time on a revolving basis over several years, and occasionally you find a place where they’re never updated, just new properties added. Since nobody really wants to pay more in taxes than they must, public calls for updating such roles are not particularly common. (In New York and some other areas, these are “tax assessment” roles, and it’s an “assessed value.”)
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Appraisals by real estate dealers. These are generated in response to, “What do you think I can get for my property?” or similar request. Some realtors are scrupulous professionals who will estimate a range of values that comes as close to fair market value as they possibly can. For others, it’s a collusion: the seller who asked for the appraisal wants as much as possible, the dealer wants as high a commission as possible. So the prices tend to be high in such cases.
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Professional appraisal. A professional real estate appraiser charges you a fee for telling you what your property is worth – but it’s worth having him prepare you one. What he will do is meticulously list the assets and liabilities of your property, investigate at least three and generally up to a dozen other properties more or less similar to yours that have sold in the recent past, factor in their assets and liabilities, and by a comparison of sales figures and his experience in what a given asset means in increased value or a given liability in decreased value, come up with a figure that is a definitive, soundly arrived-at value for what your property is in fact worth. This variety of appraisal you can take to the bank – and in fact should, if the bank is fussing about a proper mortgage value. It will be recognized by liability insurance companies and courts as a base value for any loss claim.
I’m sure it’s different in different localities. In Davidson County, however, all of the property tax appraisals on every house were just re-done last year. The key (well, very much IMHO, I guess,) is to look at houses in the same exact neighborhood that sold over the past 12 months, look at their tax appraisal value (from 2006, remember,) and THEN look at what they actually, literally sold for (in the past 12 months.) THEN, if there’s a big difference between the two numbers, there’s another step. Metro Codes has a record of every building permit applied for over the same time period (needed for everything except paint and wallpaper type renovations, driveway and fence installation, and replacing less than 33% of the roof.) So it’s possible to find out if there’s a legitimate property value improvement reason for the sales price being higher than the tax appraisal price, because if the improvements were done between appraisal and sale, there’s a public record of it and its cost. In Nashville, there is generally not a big difference between appraisal price and sales price unless structural property improvements warrant it. In a county where tax appraisal prices were not accurate or not often updated, my guess is that most houses would show a big difference across the board whether or not there had been any structural improvment between appraisal and sale.
Here’s an example, of what I did. I looked up 5708 Robertson Ave. on realtor.com. It’s 2 bedroom, 1 bath, listing for $110,000. In Davidson County property tax appraisal records, its appraisal value in 2006 is $64,000. 5810 Robertson was property tax-appraised at $70,000 in 2006. It sold on 3/21/07 for $60,000.(!) I have driven by, walked around, and externally examined both houses. They are very very similar from the outside, the neighborhood is the same, and the street noise problem is the same (worst at 5708, actually.) The only missing piece is to find out if 5708 has had any structural improvements between 2006 and today. Actually, I’m going to do that research this week-- I saved it for last because it is a LOT of work. 
From the outside, though, I would bet that it hasn’t. The exterior is nice enough, but has clearly not been worked on in the past two years. And if the exterior wasn’t upgraded, I don’t think the chances are too good that the interior was improved.
Well, anyway. With all the meds I have to take, it means a lot to me to be able to figure out something like this.
Sorry Polycarp, but after I dug this up (as a newly licensed appraiser), I couldn’t let the misinformation slide…
"They are updated when the tax appraiser gets around to "
What you mean is tax assessor.
An appraiser must follow USPAP, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice. Believe me, I had to take a comprehensive test on it, and it’s not to be taken lightly. The assessor can assess your property. A broker can perform a Competetive Market Analysis to ascertain a valutaion for the purpose recommending a listing price for the sale of your home. Hell, anybody can charge for valuation services. You just can’t call it an “appraisal”.
Only a licensed appraiser can perform an appraisal, and the guidelines are very strict. We can be held accountable even for errors or ommissions of exclusion or inclusion.
Appraisers MUST give an unbiased opinion, by law, and CANNOT act as an advocate for ANY cause.
Basically, anybody even allowing his service to be called an appraisal, or even anybody who can be identified as an appraiser, or, hell, anybody you think is an appraiser, must follow these rules, based on FIRREA, the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989, which made USPAP law. This law was enacted after the savings and loan crisis.
If you are not competent and licensed in your state, you cannot “appraise” anything without following USPAP.
The “assessor” does not perform “appraisals”.
You can get this information for most properties on Zillow. Just put in the address, then look at the sales history on right side, about halfway down the page.