My house is going to be appraised this Friday, what can I do to prerare it?

Question

I asked for a home equity loan and they told me that my house needs to be appraised at 120,000 how can I prepare it for me to have a better chance?

Answer 1

Again, like 99% of the time, I have to agree with bostonianinmo. An appraiser is not looking at the same things a buyer would be.

To help your situation, have an agent or someone access to title and MLS pull comps for similar properties in your area and find the high priced ones that recently sold and present those to him so he takes those sales into consideration. If you're an average Joe/Jane with no access to MLS or title companies, use www.zillow.com.

Regards

Answer 2

Not much. They're looking for things that you can do nothing about in 2 days, if at all. Size, location, general state of repair, and the rest of the neighborhood, etc. They are NOT looking for warm chocolate chip cookies on the counter. Do NOT waste your money on appliances! They won't affect the appraisal unless they're built in, and won't have much affect even then.

Most of the other suggestions are good ideas if you're trying to entice a buyer, but won't influence an appraiser at all. On the contrary, they may make him suspicious and prompt a more thorough evaluation of your property with an eye to finding out what you are trying to hide.

Mow the lawn, toss out the trash, pray that the hillbilly down the street doesn't park another junk pickup on his front lawn, and cross your fingers.

There's an even chance that it will be a "drive-by" appraisal, especially if you bought the home within the past few years. Not much you can do to influence that.

Answer 3

How clean or not clean does not have anything to do with whether a house appraises or not. The bank sends out an appaiser to basically make sure that the house is worth the amount of money that is it mortgaged for. This basically has to do with number of bedrooms, baths, garage, square footage, year built, style, acreage etc. There is really nothing you can do to prepare for an appraisal.

Answer 4

Just be sure that it is clean yard well kept/mowed. no paint peeling, all windows and screens in good condition, the roof in good shape, gutters downspouts etc all in order, splash blocks at the end of downspouts.

That should be the basics and appease the appraiser. Be more concerned with the comparable sales in the area. You have no control there but the appraiser is looking at those and if you know of some recent sales that they missed it can be brought to their attention for consideration. Just be sure they are good like your property kind of sales.

Answer 5

Friday isn't that far away! I would try to fix everything that may be broken or upgrade appliances. This will take money! They look at so many different factors. From how good the foundation is to how old your appliances are (like furnaces and kitchen stuff). They look at the square feet of every room, how many bathrooms you may have. All sorts of things. Good luck!

Answer 6

Clean it. Remove anything that obstructs walkways or drive. Mow the lawn and water the day before so it will be green. Oh yea, don't follow them around unless they are asking questions as they go.

Answer 7

Make sure it's very clean, and everything is in its place. Decorator touches, candles, ambience, soft music... these help too. You might even want to bake cookies to make the kitchen smell "homey". These are some subliminal touches that will help...

Answer 8

make everything clean and make ur house look homey and spacious!
also u should have fixed ur house somehow since u bought it. ex. Built-ins add a lot