[CRH911S]

flat, I don't know what the laws are in your state but in AK, Anchorage to be more specific, the assessor includes at least three examples supportive of their valuation for a given year. To verify the accuracy of their examples I visited several of the properties cited and I have to admit that they were in the ball park. In fact, if anything my home is a little underassessed. So having an appraisal done sounds okay but spending the money to do so seems to accomplish very little except to tell you what you already know.

Maybe Wayne can lend us a hand here. He's got the rent vs owning down pretty solid so if you could supply him with some numbers I'm sure he'd come up with something pretty solid that makes a lot of sense. Factoring in the sale of your home vs renting vs fixing what needs fixing and so on it would be interesting to see Wayne's analysis of the situation.

Home repairs of 100k on the eve of retirement would scare me too.