Upstairs A WRECK

What's the difference in price between yours and upstairs? How many floors is the building? How high up are you in the building?

I can't imagine what was done to the unit to affect the selling price so much. Holes in drywall? Easy and cheap fix. Holes in doors? Easy and cheap fix. Needs painting? Easy and cheap fix.

new kitchen and bath, easy BUT NOT CHEAP fix. gut the whole place, def not each or in the least bit cheap.

when the appraiser gets comps, they adjust for condition. they also take sales in the area. that one may bite you if the price difference is significant. if you have a cash buyer, it's completely irrelevant.

720K and 920K
7 floors, 5th and 4th

Ruined the hard wood floors, installed walls carving up the space, and in general poor upkeep. I should add our apartment has one more bathroom than the upstairs apt.

ouch. i'd think you can get an appraiser to bump about $100K, but not much more at that price level. on the other hand, because you have an extra bath, it may not even be used as it's not a real comp. if you are not about to sell within the next 6 months or so, don't worry.

It also depends on what other apartments in your building have sold for. If the one above you was very much lower than others then an appraiser can overlook it as an aberrition of the norm. However,if this is the only recent sale can drstically affect your appraisal

I had to pull my apartment from the market last year for a similar reason. The "wreck" sold for $100,000 less than my asking price since nothing had been done to it in 30 years, not even a range upgrade. I had a recent appraisal from my bank when I had renegotiated my mortgage rate. It was in line with my asking price and the sales prices of comparable apartments in the buiding over the past 3 years. However, we discovered that our bids were coming from investors planning to use our apartment as a rental. They all referred to the last sale claiming it wasn't really a wreck.