Tips for high appraisal

[Jeremy Taylor]

Hello everyone,

I am getting an appraisal on my house to pull some money out on a heloc. The bank is not giving me a choice in the appraisal company and I have used the one they use in the past and I always get real low appraisals. Do you have any tips on how to maximize the appraisal value without major construction. I live in a community/city of all custom homes from 200k-4 million. It’s a unique city and the comps they use typically are not comparable at all. Any tips or suggestions? 

[Chris Mason]

Originally posted by @Jeremy Taylor:

Hello everyone,

I am getting an appraisal on my house to pull some money out on a heloc. The bank is not giving me a choice in the appraisal company and I have used the one they use in the past and I always get real low appraisals. Do you have any tips on how to maximize the appraisal value without major construction. I live in a community/city of all custom homes from 200k-4 million. It’s a unique city and the comps they use typically are not comparable at all. Any tips or suggestions? 

Might be academic at this point, but could be useful in the future:

A few months out, start going to open houses that will be comps in the near future. Tell the listing agent you are unrepresented and are thinking of writing an offer, but don't want to waste anyone's time, so please shoot me the seller's disclosures. In the Bay Area, listing agents are pretty liberal with handing these out, especially if there's a possibility of double ending it in the agent's head.... I'm sure it'll be the same for you down in SoCal.

Great, now it's 2 months in the future, most of those comps have closed, and you know EVERYTHING wrong with them! If the appraiser knows that the seller on 123 Main St disclosed a jenky water heater and water damage in the basement, he can/will adjust for it when doing your appraisal. Hand over those disclosures detailing all flaws with your comps. 

Once upon a time appraisers made a decent income relative to living expenses and would do this sort of thorough research, but appraisal fees haven't been tracking with increased costs of living for some time, so it's currently a volume game for appraisers, not really a quality game. So, in lieu of appraisal fees going up 50% so that an Oakland appraiser can actually afford to live in Oakland without doing a zillion super quick appraisals a month, sometimes you've got to "help" them like this.