Not one but three Sun City golf course homes could make this the Summer of sweat equity in Newlife…

I fell in love with this house yesterday. I liked it on the hotsheet, so I went to see it in person, then I ended up writing about it on Facebook:

It was still bugging me this morning, in the wee hours, so I made a CMA to see if I was right about the price.

The bad news: The house is completely livable as-is, but it will need upgrading everywhere – either over time or all at once. Most notably, the home is clad in vinyl siding that will want a costly replacement.

The good news: The list price is fully supported, which means the house will appraise at list. FHA-ready, too, I should think. It’s not a flipper-scale bargain, but it is a good deal for owner-occupants who are willing to upgrade their way into a truly remarkable golf course home.

As it turns out, two of the three ‘comparables’ I used to price this home – 12471 N. Augusta Dr. – are also actively for sale and and are also good candidates for owner-occupant upgrading.

Newlife is South of Grand Avenue and adjacent to Youngtown, so it’s not quite as tony as other Sun City golf course communities. But these houses are selling for around $100k less than they would go for bestride Palmbrook in Phase Two – kind of a big difference.

Pricing real estate is an art. I’ve always been good at it. But then I was a ‘pricing algorithm’ for Zillow-the-catastrophic-iBuyer for a year and a day, and I came away a house-whisperer, fast and unassailable. And then I started reading all of the Sun City listings…

There’s more to pricing than just math, but the math makes it harder to make mistakes. So to figure out what our subject property is actually worth to the buyer, we need to compare it to other, very similar properties and then adjust for the differences. Here’s my worksheet for the houses we worked with:

The CMA software enables easy adjustment for objective factors – Fireplace, yes or no? – so my notes concern subjective matters and special adjustments. Interior and Exterior adjustments run from -2 to +2, adjusting by multiples of $5k, $10k or $20k depending on the price range of the properties. We’re not adjusting for the presumptive cost of the upgrade, but simply estimating how much the difference might move the needle among buyers.

I didn’t adjust for time, because the past year has been a flat ripple in Sun City, but I did adjust for square footage and lot size, using this calculator I put together in my Zillow days:

The net result, after taking everything into account, is a reliable number:

The list price for Augusta is great, but 10917 W Oakmont Dr and 12601 N Augusta Dr are both good deals at $340k each – the price both are hinting at.

“The Season” is ending, so all three could suffer from a lack of golf course buyers. But all three have an After-Repair-Value of $400k+, so this Summer could be the season of sweat equity in Newlife…