Common Home Appraisal Questions

Once the appraisal is scheduled, an appraiser will come to your location, get eyes on the real estate, and take detailed measurements and photographs to evaluate and prepare your appraisal report / property valuation. 

During the appraiser’s visit - also known as the appraisal inspection, the appraiser will:

• Visit each room of the home
• Sketch the property complete with measurements
• Take pictures of the interior and exterior
• Take notes of rooms, features, upgrades and more

Once the appraiser goes back to the office to prepare the report and findings, your appraisal report is then delivered electronically with accurate, honest, detailed findings, facts & figures to support the property valuation.

If you will have a mortgage loan to pay for your home, the lender will require an appraisal. Why? Because the bank wants to ensure their collateral. However, if you are paying with cash, the appraisal is optional.

Depending on the size of the home, an appraiser can spend anywhere from 1 to 4+ hours at your home, and additional time at the office completing the appraisal report.

Once the inspection is done, the appraisal is not yet complete. An appraiser now needs to take the information collected from their visit and compile it into an appraisal report with data from your home and comparable home sales and listings, along with a quality rating and a valuation of the home’s worth.

The office work after the appraisal inspection can take anywhere from 2 - 48 hours or more depending on the complexity of the property being appraised.

Before an appraiser arrives, there are a few things you should know. By law, an appraiser must be state licensed/certified to perform appraisals prepared for federally related transactions. Also by law, you are entitled to receive a copy of the completed appraisal report from your lender.

1. Have Documents Ready: To facilitate the appraisal process, it's beneficial to have a few documents ready for the appraiser - see the list.


2. Clean Your Home: A clean (or cluttered) home does not affect a home’s value. Appraisers see hundreds of homes a year and will look past most clutter, but they're human beings too! A good impression can help form a better opinion.


3. Repairs To Make: A home appraisal is different from a home inspection. A real estate appraiser looks for things that affect the overall value of the house, while a home inspector looks deeper to identify things that need to be fixed before you close.
   
   The short answer is no, you don’t need to do every home repair before an appraisal - but you DO want to have them done before the inspection. There are some exceptions though. Here are the most common repairs that should be addressed before an appraiser visits your property:
   
   
   • Health and safety issues
   • Protecting the security of the property
   • Structural soundness of the property
   
   See examples mentioned here.

Besides square footage, and condition of the home to determine overall value, an appraiser is also looking for safety hazards or things that could cause damage to the house. Why? Because the different types of loans (VA, FHA, Conventional Loan) have their own requirements. In some cases the lender has their own set of requirements beyond those. It’s almost like the appraiser is performing a mini-inspection.

Here are common things an appraiser looks at:

• Exterior & Interior
• Stairs
• Paint Condition
• Roof Condition
• Structural Integrity
• Rotting or Bare Wood
• Utilities / Home Systems
• Size of home, size of lot, and number of beds/baths

Now that you know what they look for, find out more about what can help or hurt your appraisal.

Many people think that appraisals and inspections are essentially the same thing - but there are some key differences. Both an appraiser and inspector will walk around the house and take a good look at it, but they're each at the house for different reasons.

The appraiser is looking at the value of the home. An appraiser's primary mission is to protect the lender (Fannie Mae, FHA, VA Etc.). Lenders don't want to own overpriced property and that's why the appraisal takes place before the lender grants final approval of the buyer's loan. With that in mind, it's not surprising that appraisers aren't interested in whether or not the house is clean - but they do notice signs of neglect such as cracked walls, chipped paint, broken windows, torn carpets, damaged flooring etc.

While an appraiser is looking at the value of the home, a home inspector is looking for any defects with the home that may cause you financial grief later and educates the buyer about the condition of the home and its major components.

If you believe that the public records are inaccurate, you should contact your local county’s assessment department to request that the data be reviewed. The process varies by location; some may ask you to file an appeal or submit a grievance. It may help to submit the recent appraisal, or property measurements done by a certified appraiser, to the department to review and make any adjustments if necessary.

Square footage will affect your home’s assessed value, but it also has an affect on how much property tax you pay. If the actual measurements result in more square footage than the county tax assessment office has recorded, using the higher square footage calculation could increase the value of your home. That’s great if you want to sell, but it may also increase your property taxes.

An appraisal waiver allows you to be approved for a mortgage without an appraisal at all. It is an offer to waive the appraisal for eligible transactions, including mortgages purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Instead of an appraisal, valuations supporting the mortgages are performed by Fannie and Freddie in-house, using proprietary analytics and deep stores of property data in their databases of information. 

Find out more about Appraisal Waivers.

One thing you can not do if you are refinancing or buying a home with a loan is order your own appraisal. Why? Because of the home loan. Regulations require the lender be the one to order the appraisal. If a loan is not involved (for example, in the case of an estate appraisal or divorce) you can choose your own appraiser.

House appraisal costs vary by company, but generally start at $500 and go up depending on the location, size, availability of comps, or other unusual circumstances. 

Yes, you can decline services of the appraiser the lender chooses - however there may be a fee involved (like a cancellation fee). 

If this is the case and you let the appraiser know you are not going through with their appraisal (before they perform the appraisal), you’ll need to call the lender or your real estate agent and let them know the reason why you declined the appraiser so they can send someone else out to complete the appraisal. 

However, if you decline services of an appraiser who has already come to your home, there may be a cancellation fee involved.

The appraiser will most likely know the selling price of a home. Why? Because the standard appraisal forms require the appraiser to enter the information, thus the appraiser will have a copy of the purchase contract.

It depends on the Realtor. Some Realtors give the appraiser copies of all the offers while others only provide the contract that was accepted. If you have multiple offers, it is wise to ask your agent to inform the appraiser of all offers received.

If the appraisal comes back low, the seller can reduce the price down to the appraised value, the buyer can pay the difference by increasing the down payment, or the buyer can decide not to purchase the property.