First, I never said appraised value is market value. However, I will say this, lenders ONLY care about appraise value, not market value. You’ve proved this before with a house in your hood that’s sell for more than what the appraiser can appraise it for and the buyer have to come up with the cash difference. This is not a prediction. I’ve seen many appraisal and they ALL gave additional appraised value for the pool. The amount are different between the different appraiser, but they all gave you something.
So, no, you can’t predict appraised or market value, but you can know with 100% certainty that appraiser will give you a few grand (in my previous experiences, it’s $10k+) in appraised value. It doesn’t matter if appraised value are all over the map, it only matter if the one appraisal for your refi. I’ve been in situation where the loan fell through because the appraisal came in 15% below what it should be. The variance of appraised value is irrelevant to the discussion though. My point is that, ALL appraiser will give you some “value” for the pool. If you remove it, you’re essentially removing that value.
So, for example, if you buy the house at appraised value and you remove the pool. The initial appraisal gave you $x,000 value for the pool. Assuming we can remove the variance from appraise value, you can be certain that you won’t have $x,000 value in the new appraisal. Which mean, if rates drop right after you remove the pool, you either have to come up with $x,000 to make up for the difference or you’re SOL for the refi.
Another example would be, your house value went up and you want to cash out. If you remove the pool, your appraisal will be $x,000 less than if you didn’t (from the exact same appraiser at the exact same time). I know this, because they won’t fill in the box that say you have a pool and it increase your appraise value by $x,000. Which means, you won’t be able to cash out as much as if you didn’t remove the pool.
Another example would be, you’re unlucky and got a low appraisal when you try to refi. If you decide to go forward and bring cash to the table at closing, I know for certain that you will have to bring $x,000 more to the table if you remove the pool than if you didn’t remove the pool.
Another example is if you’re trying to sell your house. Lets say you list it at $500k and you got an offer at $500k. If the appraisal came in at $450k, I’m pretty sure if you didn’t remove the pool, it would have been appraised for $450k + $x,000. I’m pretty sure the buyer will most likely want to lower the price down the appraised value. Unless you have a strong buyer that don’t care about appraise value, which, I think is a very small group of buyer.
I can give you many more scenarios where removing the pool will adversely affect your situation and limit your options. But you get the point. It’s not always about market value. Market value is important when you try to sell. However, appraised value is important if you want to refi. Lender won’t care about market value, but buyers will care about appraised value.