I am on the other side of the country in Pa. Thats a Steiger Bearcat made for Allis and the big old ones like that dont sell too well, have seen similar go for from 1500 to 3500 depending on condition and rebuilds. Might be a good idea to put in the hands of a dealer on a commission sale? They have to be pretty square on the deals, at least around here they are.

Funny but in the 1980's I was buying my Volvos in Canada and bringing them to the states. I got about a 35% exchange on my money, a bigger discount from the dealer in Canada and got refunded the manufacturing tax that was supposedly included in the sticker price of the Canadian car. I paid no sales tax or value added tax, but had to pay the US State sales tax. I paid a tariff of 2% or about $280 per car. If I had bought a US brand car manufactured in Canada, there would be no tariff. The funny thing is I was getting such a deal on the cars that a few times I sold the car in the US at one year old for more than I paid for it new. So, for a few years I had a new car for no more out of pocket funds. The New England volvo dealers put pressure on Canadian Volvo and thereafter they would no longer put the proper EPA and DOT stickers on the cars so they couldn't be imported by individuals. The warranties were good in either country. In fact if you read most vehicle warranties it says that they are good in the US or Canada. My US Volvo dealer told me to bring the car in anytime for warranty work and they would treat me the same as if I had purchased the car from them. They always did....no waiting and no fuss.

FmrQuahog, Either you are just a troll or are just skimming my posts. I stated that comps are used and then adjustments are made for items that are not of equal value. Such as condition. Then you come on in the next post stating: "Why should an uncared for home drag down the price of my lovingly maintained and upgraded home" And again, it will not affect your value, as condition is another one of those items that are adjusted when comparing two separate properties. You also state: "I suggested that the value of a home should be calculated by independently appraising it in it's entirety." But at what baseline would the appraiser start at? At some arbitrary, random price? Like others have said, two homes exactly alike, can have two very different market values in two different locations. Everything in the free market is valued this way, rather you want to admit it or not, even your widgets that you make at work. You don't really think that the buyers of your widgets don't compare the attributes and qualities of your product against the competition do you? Sure they do. And after comparing them to the rest of the comparable products on the market at that time, they decide if your asking price is reasonable or not. Same process as valuating your home.

The question is how does the land value get used as a downpayment. You've said that houses in the neighbourhood are selling for $275k, so we'll assume that's what your house will be worth, for the sake of explanation. With any mortgage, building or buying, the bank wants to know that they'll be able to sell the house (and land together, obviously) for at least as much as you owe on it, in the event you don't pay your mortgage. So to protect themselves, they may say that the max they'll loan you to build or buy the house is 80% of what it's worth. So $220k is the maximum amount they are willing to put into that house. And that includes the land. If you were buying one of the existing houses, your downpayment would be the $55k needed on top of the $220k to pay the $275k for the house. And the idea is that you've got an incentive to keep paying your mortgage in order to not lose that $55k. Let's say for the sake of the explanation, your land was worth $100k, and it cost $220k to build the house. The house may still only be worth $275k. It doesn't matter to future buyers that the land and build cost was $320k, if they can get another similar house for $275k, that's all they're going to pay. And that would be all the house is worth. And this happens because custom costs more. You pay a premium for getting "exactly" what you want. So, assuming you own the land outright, you need another $220k to build. So you borrow that from the bank. The land becomes your "downpayment" because it's what you'll lose if the bank has to foreclose. If you didn't already own the land outright, and needed a loan to cover that, you can get the loan for $100k, and then borrow another $120k to build the house, and then have to come up with $100k towards the building cost. So while in the first example, you feel like you're getting the shaft, having to borrow the whole amount even though you own a $100k piece of property, it is still saving you having to come up with the extra $100k for the build. Or, if you had $25k equity on the land, you could borrow $145k towards your $220k build, and then only have to come up with $75k in cash. Other than putting up the value of the land against the risk of default, for a small amount of land value against the cost of a build, you don't really get to use the land as a "downpayment".