[StBernard] Road Home

[Westley Annis]

Jer,

Rule number one is don't rely on any figures that any government official or
sponsored party gives you. Period.

Make sure you have an accurate value for your home by having an appraisal
done (and I do say that even though John Scurich is sponsoring messages this
week).  We all know that the assessor's office has never given an accurate
assessment of a homes value.  Heck, I just got my assessment in today for
the house we bought in Thibodaux.  The appraised value was $132,000.  The
assessed value is $109,800.  You figure the difference out.

As for damages, get an estimate. Don't rely on some drive-by figure from
somebody out of California.  At a minimum you can probably estimate your
damages yourself if you use $130 square foot (I think this is the value I
heard for remodels) for 100% damage and work down from there.  And that is
interior work only.  The roof is an add-on figure.

Westley

-----Original Message-----

"The two things you will need to do is get your pre-Katrina value as high as
possible and your percent of damage as high as possible since these will be
the limiting factors on how much you could receive." --Wesley

Wes, do you care to elaborate on this? Originally some were classified as
30-60% damage at the onset. Given those who were, how can the percent of
damage classified affect the amount of money given in the road home? The
project mentioned something like more than $5000 damage or something similar
(low). However, the project didn't clarify that those who were 0-30, 30-60%,
etc. were given more because of the degree of damage.

If it is affecting the outcome (degree of damage percentage), how does one
"get pre-Katrina value as high as possible or the percent damage similarly"?
Are you saying that if the parish stipulates one has 30-60%, that that
homeowner needs to rebuke/protest that decision and find someone who will
say you have over 60% damage? Will then, over 60% give you more in a grant
to the homeowner? If there's a method/suggestion to getting more (legally)
out of a project or a way to achieve greater grant money's we'd like to know
what must be done..

Jer.