Calculating Premiums & Discounts in a Comparative Market Analysis (“CMA”)
How much value do Realtors and Appraisers assign to an upstairs Laundry when estimating a home’s fair market value?
The honest answer is, I’ve never seen it broken out as a specific adjustment, with a corresponding price tag (or even range) assigned to it.
That’s true even though MLS has a “Special Search” field for “2nd Floor Laundry” (photo, below left).
My gut says there are two reasons for that: 1) an upstairs Laundry is too small an item ” perhaps $10k**, vs. $50k — $100k for an updated Kitchen (or not); and 2) it’s captured in a broader category.
Subsumed
For example, new $1.5 million homes with over 4,000 square feet in Edina typically have four (or more) Bedrooms up, including a large Owner’s Suite; en suite Bathrooms for the other Bedrooms; AND an upstairs Laundry.
It’s sort of a package deal.
By contrast, 1930’s and 1940’s Colonials near Lake Calhoun and Cedar Lake may not even have a master Bath ” never mind the upstairs Laundry.
So, the adjustment is $50k — $75k for no Owner’s Suite and a small hall Bath ” not $10k for no upstairs Laundry.
Make sense??
**Of course, there’s another way to assign a value to an upstairs Laundry: the estimated cost to put one in.
If there’s existing plumbing nearby, and a walk-in closet that can be converted, the cost is lower; absent those things . . . (a lot) more.
There’s also the qualitative, lifestyle value to having an upstairs Laundry, especially if the family has young kids and the existing Laundry is in a dank, unfinished basement.
See also, “How Appraisers Account for a Bowling Alley in the Basement (Ideally).”
