Should You Hire A Home Appraiser?
There might be certain stages in your life or circumstances when you need to know how much your home is worth. Selling or buying a home, a divorce, or even deciding to go for a renovation are some examples of circumstances where you would want to know the cost of your home. That would call for an appraisal which is also officially needed by mortgage agencies, and for tax purposes.
What is an appraisal and what do home appraisers do?
An appraisal is an unbiased estimate of the cost of a real estate property of any type of dwelling. It’s unbiased because the appraisal agency has no benefits to gain if you are selling or buying and are not involved in the listing process of a property. Their job is to give you an estimate of the true value, or fair market, of a home. Mortgage agencies will always ask for an appraisal in order to ensure that the money a borrower is claiming is appropriate to the worth of the house. In order to do that, mortgages need to have objective information to work with.
Appraisals are carried out by appraisers who are licensed and trained professionals in this field. By default, there is strict monitoring on appraisers because any judgmental or misleading information they present can have severe repercussions. The estimation they give is not just a voiced opinion. It is based on several factors which appraisers file into a report to be submitted if they are an employee of a named company. Any factor that affects the price of a house is noted.
Sometimes people don’t know if they should get a home appraiser or home appraisal. The answer to that is first, hire the home appraiser. People will often rush into renovating parts of their home or their entire home to get a better appraisal. But this could lead to spending thousands of dollars in the wrong place. An appraiser can tell you exactly what needs to be renovated or fixed to get a higher appraisal.
What do appraisers look at?
An appraiser is trained to look at the condition of the house internally and externally. This includes all physical characteristics such as: size in square meters, structural integrity, neighborhood and location, view, number of rooms, number of bathrooms and any other observations. Basically, anything you can take out of the house, like furniture or room décor is not appraised.
What you can do for a better appraisal
There are things you can do before an appraisal happens such as: a thorough cleaning inside and outside the house, fix anything that can be fixed, give the exterior a light paint job, and generally make your house look new even it’s not.
Use their knowledge
Appraisers study the housing market every day, so they will know everything needed to know and direct you along the right path. The cost to hire an appraiser will be much less than the cost of not knowing what a house is worth. It makes a lot of sense to use their knowledge to maximize your investments.
