Selling Your Home? Get It Appraised?

In today's Real Estate market home values are becoming more subjective each and every day. When Realtors do a market analysis on a property to come up with an asking price for a home we generally are putting together an educated guess based on the previous properties that sold and what is actively on the market right now.

However; you can ask whatever you want for a home. It does not mean someone is going to pay the price for that home...or worse yet you get someone to agree to your price and find out that when the bank orders the appraisal on the home that it does not appraise for what you are selling it for.

Today the market is constantly changing. Everyday there are new homes going on the market and other homes going into foreclosure. Banks are trying to liquidate inventory quickly so as not to have a glutton of homes on the market at one time...In addition people are working with banks on short sales to help alleviate the burden from banks foreclosed books. These are ALL factors that affect the value of a home.

I recently have had two of my last five sales come back with an apprasial that was less than the agreed upon price. The strange thing on them was not that I could not justify the price my client was either selling the house for or my buyer was purchasing the house for. But it was subjective by the apprasier.

The appraiser may use the same comparables I utilized to arrive at the number. However; I am seeing all too often in the appraisal that the "market conditions show a decrease in home values for the past twelve months". Thus their value of the home is less than mine is on the same property. So as a buyer's agent I cannot nor will support my client paying more than a home is valued at....then you run into the situation of does the seller concede the difference in the price? Do you begin looking again? As A seller you had the home off the market for that time period and may have lost another buyer? Or if they are using the same type of financing that appraisal will stay with the property for 90 days. So if you sell it to anyone else for that period of time using the same type of financing you will run into the same issue again. It becomes a very tough situation for all parties involved.

I have been advising my clients to have an independent appraiser come out and look at the home. Get a number as to what the value of the home is before you put it on the market... Like I said I can ask what ever you want for a home. But the bank is going to only lend X amount of dollars. Would you rather know that upfront?

Dave diCecco

Realtor/Broker

ww.davedicecco.com