Basement Theater/Game Room [Finished!]

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orion:
javeryh,

After reading thought this thread I have a couple of thoughts on the matter. You are correct to hire an architect. The hose we are living in now we bought from a friend of mine I grew up with. He went the design with contractor route, and let me say the layout of the house is pretty much FUBAR. It's a nice house and when we looked at it we didn't see anything wrong with it, but after living in it for a few years we can honestly say the layout just doesn't work very well. No, pantry, the washer and dryer are out in the garage, the living room is a long narrow space.. small kitchen ect. On paper though and if you are just walking though it, it certainly looks nice, but after living in the space, it just doesn't work all that well. An architect is going to think about the functionality of a space, the trick is to not let them go overboard.

As far as the appraisal. Yep the banks are being especially screwy on this right now. When we bought the house, my friend just wanted to get out and build a new house before his baby came. So he sold it to us for the tax value. At the time, this meant I had 30K in equity just for signing the dotted line! It was a no brainier at the time. Fast forward a couple of years to refinance time... The first bank (who we had the original mortgage with) low balled the hell out of us on the appraisal. The second bank (who got our business) came back with an appraisal right in line with what we were thinking, allowing us the refinance. Point is the banks are appraising property at whatever the hell is in their best interests to appraise a house it would seem. Bank A, wanted to keep me at a higher interest rate... Bank B obviously liked my credit history and wanted my business... so bank B won. I have to say though I honestly don't know what my house is worth after all that though.

As far as the banks not loaning any money right now.... yeah that's right. We bailed them out for them to continue to loan money to prevent the economy from tanking, help people still get home an auto loans and for small business loans to create jobs. The ---uvulas--- decided to sit on all that money. Now we live in a county where the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and the middle class is going by by... In short the reason you can't get a loan right now is because your bank sucks ass... Stay away from the large banks. I will never bank with one of them again and will just do business with smaller local banking institutions. I would visit a mortgage broker and see what they can do for you.

Also it sounds to me like you don't want a home theater, rather a media room. A dedicated home theater will never ever offer you a decent return on investment and will actually loose you money.... a media room on the other hand is another story and sounds more like what you want anyway. I'm more than happy with mine and would personally only ever go for a dedicated home theater if I ever won the lottery! Those things can run you 100 to 200K easy! Just run a crap load of outlets, cat 5 and speaker wire before the drywall goes up and your good to go...

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/13889-digital-home-media-room-vs-home-theater-video.htm

Your going to also have to have an egress window in every room in that basement.. it's code now. Also spend your evenings watching HGTV and "This Old House" You will get a ton of great ideas watching that crap :)

javeryh:
Thanks for the advice orion. I am definitely only going forward with this project with an architect - I totally get what you mean about the "flow" of the house. Also, looking at another bank might be the way to go based on....

We just got the valuation back from the bank this week and I am VERY disappointed. The valuation came in WAY low based on my previous valuation in 2009 (it was $120,000 LESS) and also based on what similar houses are on the market for in my neighborhood. There is a house with an identical floor plan as mine one block away (on a busier road) that is for sale right now for $100,000 more than our valuation came in at. I am still in shock. I can't believe I paid $400 for it.

To put this in perspective, they did a free "drive by" valuation a few weeks ago and the valuation was only $20,000 less than the one they just did based on the walk-through. We have a new kitchen with all new appliances, new hot water heater, new electrical box, new central air, a finished bedroom in the walk-up attic, a 1/2 bath downstairs, recently finished hardwood floors, chair rail and crown molding in every room, an "open" floor plan, new 6 panel doors in every doorway, etc. We have done a lot and the house is really nice on the inside - the walk-through only got us an additional $20,000? It makes NO sense. The house could have been completely disgusting on the inside with 35 cats, cigarette smoke, 1960s wallpaper and appliances, etc. and they would be willing to lend us pretty much the same amount. I'm getting angry just typing this up.

The real kicker is that when I asked the bank to see a write-up of the report they couldn't provide it. I wanted to see an itemized list and written confirmation of how the appraiser arrived at his number and the bank couldn't produce it which makes me think the guy pulled the number out of his bum and the bank just pocketed our $400.

Anyway, we are still leaning on going forward with the addition but we are going to have to put out almost double the amount of cash we initially were hoping to. I don't know what else to do at this point.

RayB:

--- Quote from: javeryh on November 10, 2010, 09:43:17 am --- There is a house with an identical floor plan as mine one block away (on a busier road) that is for sale right now for $100,000 more than our valuation came in at. I am still in shock. I can't believe I paid $400 for it.
--- End quote ---
Invite a realtor to come to your home for an interview. Pretend you are thinking of selling. Any good realtor will bring with lists of recent sales in your neighborhood and then you can compared prices on houses that have SOLD, rather than what someone is asking. That house $100k over your evaluation might sell for MUCH less.

HaRuMaN:
Forget a realtor... just check out Zillow, and you can see the home sales in your neighborhood.

javeryh:

--- Quote from: HarumaN on November 10, 2010, 01:41:42 pm ---Forget a realtor... just check out Zillow, and you can see the home sales in your neighborhood.

--- End quote ---

I've been looking on Zillow like crazy. It is still hard to judge. For example, the house 3 down from us is the same as mine and it sold in 2007 for $100,000 more than the appraisal came in at - but that was 2007 right before the bubble burst. The house next door to me was bought in 1991 for $400,000 less (nice ROI)! It's all over the map. What could also be killing me is that down the street a house recently sold for about $90,000 (less than 20% of the actual value if I had to guess) because it was sold by a parent to their kid. The bank said they factor in all recent sales in the area when doing the appraisal.

Anyway, we've been thinking about it for a while and I think we are still going to move forward with the addition. I'm creeping up on 40 and I've been overly responsible my whole life (financially, at least) and this wouldn't be a huge risk because it's not like we'd be completely depleting our savings. It would still be a risk though and I hate taking risks. I've got to start living at some point instead of saving for the future all of the time. The kids are only going to be living at home for another 15 years max - might as well go for broke (literally). The realistic time line of the project would be over the course of the next year anyway - this gives us plenty of time to earn and save the difference that the bank is not willing to loan us.

:dunno

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