Had my informal today.
My first issue was with the square footage (as explained above). I had my diagram from the appraisal and a pic to show the atrium was indeed not livable space. So they redrew their diagram and reduced the improvement square footage. However, when I asked (as I think would be logical) for them to reduce the market value of the house the appropriate amount since the square footage wasn't the same, he balked and said he couldn't do that.
Then I brought out my HUD-1 from last year's purchase which showed a purchase price lower than appraised value, and further, that showed a seller contribution to bring the price down further. After he checked with a supervisor he came back and said they could accept the sales price with the seller contribution in the informal, but they might not accept it in the formal. (I think he was blowing smoke because it's the law that seller contribution factors in.)
I had a whole other U&E presentation from Jubally as well, which I was hoping not to use. Recent sales price on the HUD-1, plus a sizeable dollar amount for the reduction in square footage, should have gotten me well below even the Jubally value. I didn't go into it since we were pressed for time after adjusting the sqft on the computer.
Bottom line, they only offered to reduce by the recent sales price, and adjusted square footage but not the dollar value assigned to the square footage.
So, I did have some questions to hopefully help maximize my presentation in my formal.
1. Should I reasonably expect my value to be lowered correspondent with the square footage that was reduced?
2. If the answer to #1 is yes, should I reasonably expect to add that reduction to the amount of the 2016 sale on the HUD-1?
3. If the answer to #1 is no, why not?
4. Do they just not trust the informal appraisers to do math? I had it all laid out as far as how much to subtract to account for the lowered square footage, but perhaps they don't allow them to do those calculations in that setting?