Rehabbed but not happy with appraisal

[Tanzia Hossain]

Hello , I wanted to ask why appraisals are not what u think it will be after u have rehabbed a whole house . Would appreciate any advice on what I can do to make sure it appraises better . Thanks

[Jose Batista Abikarram]

Hey @Tanzia Hossain. Appraisal is one of those things we cannot control and just hope for the best. IN saying that there are few things you could try:

1) Show the comps you used to the appraisal and kindly say that you are trying to understand his numbers with the comps you have. This needs to be detailed, and to the point without stating that he is in fact wrong. Again this is a suggestion and is in his/her right to just ignore the request

2) You can pay for another appraisal and hope is better

3) You can sell the house and hope the market takes care of it

4) Rent it out for longer and with cashflow you should eventually recover the investment

Hope that helps!

[Kevin Sobilo]

@Tanzia Hossain, appraisals are "opinions" of value. So, they are just fancy estimates. There can be a fair amount of legitimate variance. Also some appraisers are lazy and sometimes their work shows that if you look carefully enough. I had the same issue with appraisals when I started out rehabbing houses.

Now, when I do a cash-out refi now, I always walk the property with the
appraiser myself. I bring printouts of what I think are good comparable
sales and I just tell the appraiser what value I am looking for and why.
So, I give the appraiser good info and tell them what I think and why.
Since I have started doing this my appraisals have gone well.

[Tanzia Hossain]

Thanks for your valuable reply . I’m actually renting our the house but since I wanted to refi I wasn’t happy with the appraisal at all . Do u think I should wait another 6 months to refi? Thanks !