I want to go over the best way to get your home to appraise. At least the best possible way to get your home to appraise.

We’ve been running in low appraisals for a number of years and homes not appraising. The best thing that you can do to get your home to appraise is to make sure your real Estate Agent Meets the appraiser at the property and have them pull up detailed information justifying the value. What tends to happen is a lot of these appraisers are coming from all over the area.

For example, I live in Tampa. I might have a home that I listed and sold in New Tampa. Maybe the appraiser’s coming from 45 minutes away. They don’t understand the market. They don’t understand which builders built the homes. They don’t understand or never even been in the subdivision before. Make sure your real Estate Agent goes out there and meets them.

I just had an Agent a couple of weeks ago and what happened is she had some documentation that showed the home was larger than it was but it didn’t show up that large in the tax roll. The tax roll showed 2,500 and something square feet. Her documentation had over 2,700 square feet. She didn’t meet the appraiser, she didn’t give him this, and it came in substantially lower because the appraiser was using different comparables. So just make sure that your real estate agent meets the appraiser out there.

Some appraisers won’t even really talk to realtors. They won’t even take the information or the documentation. But make sure your real estate agent meets them and tries to give them the information. At least, hopefully, they’ll have the realtor’s card. And if they can’t find comparables, maybe they’ll give the real estate agent a call. They’re really supposed to do this, they should do this, but a lot of appraisers don’t.

It comes down to getting an agent that really understands what they’re doing and understands the market, understands your subdivision, et cetera. This is the best thing you can do. There are no guarantees. If the lender ordered the appraisal through a management company, you’re almost pretty much dead in the water.

If they’ve ordered it through VA, if the buyer was a veteran and they’re going through the veterans administration, that’s good news and it’s one of the reasons why I love VA loans – it’s because you can appeal the appraisal two times. Keep that in mind and make sure your agent keeps that in mind when you’re getting offers. I have purposely accepted offers from veterans and suggested the seller do this just for this reason and it’s come back to reward us.

Anyhow, I hope this helps you. If you have any questions on real estate in the Tampa market, please don’t hesitate to give me a call. Have a wonderful day and best of luck with your home appraisal.

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