Looking for advice on maximizing appraisal value on a unique house

[Robert Taylor]

We accepted an offer on a house that I had posted some pics of earlier on here, its not your "typical" flip, at least not for me, it was a 4600+ sq foot English tudor, just a half of a block off of Lake Michigan on the east side of Milwaukee. In Milwaukee, the "east side" area is desirable and gets better and better as you get closer to the lake, this house is in a pretty prime location. It was built in 1928 and the previous owners, who lived there for 20+ years, had been low on money for years up until the bank finally foreclosed, so a lot of maintenance had been deferred, no major issues, but the house definitely needed a lot of TLC.

Our work consisted mainly of repainting the whole place, inside and out, which included replacing a fair amount of the trim boards on the exterior, installing new copper gutters and flashings, a few minor repairs to the slate roof (no leaks), a new driveway and garage floor, new garage flat rubber roof, renovating 2 full bathrooms that we used a lot of pretty expensive tile in, all floors except the sunroom had hardwood floors that were sanded and refinished, the sunroom had a travertine floor installed. New granite countertops in the kitchen (which had been fully and nicely redone about 8 years ago, one of the few things the previous owners spent extra money on) and all new period-correct lighting was installed. We also had an all new, high-efficiency HVAC system installed (2 furnaces, 2 AC's, all new ductwork, too) to replace the old boiler/radiators.

I'm looking for any advice anyone has on maximizing the appraisal value we get on the appraisal, which will be within the next 2 weeks. I'll try to give a little more relevant info on the house here and feel free to ask me any other questions that come to mind! As far as comps go, there aren't too many that are at least say, moderately comparable and really nothing that's right on the money, as far as being a very comparable building and location AND very recent, too. Our asking price was $799,900 and the offer is at $750k. I personally would've held out for more, either from these buyers or different ones, the house had only been on the market about 60 days and we had quite a few showings, but my brother, who is my silent partner and more of the money end of the partnership, was aching to get this one off the balance sheet, so we accepted the $750k. I am also a realtor, so I can go on the mls and pull up comps myself. Within about 10 blocks and all in a very comparable neighborhood, since May 2012 have been 16 houses selling between $500k and $955k, going back to May 2011 there's 33 sold starting at $500k and going up to $1.4M. Now, there are a lot of those that are right near by that sold between $550k and $650k, although they're all somewhat smaller and don't have all of the updates that ours has, certainly none with an all new HVAC system, they all have the old radiators, some of them have retrofit central air systems.

My plans so far (based a lot on my reading here on BP!) are to first pull the best 3 to 5 comps I can, of course I will look for the highest values, but I will be honest about what I pick. Next, I plan on DEFINITELY meeting the appraiser when he/she does their appraisal and walking through the whole time with them, pointing out every last piece of work that we did, as well as any other value-adding details he/she might miss. From there, I'm wondering what else everyone here would suggest to maximize the value?