House #13: Appraisal

The appraisal for The Poor House came back at our contract price, so assuming no financing surprises, it looks like we’ll be going to closing on this one in the next two weeks…

That said, we almost didn’t get a high-enough appraisal, and it was all my fault. As I mentioned in my article last week about “Controlling Your Deals,” it’s up to me (and you) as sellers to make sure we do everything in our power to ensure that each aspect of a transaction goes smoothly and successfully. Unfortunately, with this appraisal, I didn’t heed my own advice.

We received a call from the appraiser that was coming out to the property last Monday afternoon. But, my wife and I were scheduled to head out of town for a couple days, leaving Monday morning. We knew our project manager could handle the appraisal — meeting with the appraiser, showing him around, providing him relevant info, etc — and we even left him with some documentation to give to the appraiser regarding our costs and list of repairs.

But, in our hurry to get on vacation, I didn’t take the time to put together a list of potential comps for the appraiser to look at, and to use at his discretion. Don’t get me wrong — 99% of appraisers are great at what they do and don’t need us to provide a list of comps, but we’ve found that if we do provide comps, many appraisers will appreciate it and will go out of their way to use them. In addition, sometimes an appraiser may be busy and just miss a good comp, and in this tough market, that can make the difference between an appraisal coming in high enough and it coming in way low.

Turns out that in this case, the appraiser missed a comp that supports the value of our property. Luckily for us, he was very nice, and before turning in the low appraisal, he called the mortgage broker to warn her that it was low. She called the buyer’s agent, who called us, and we quickly got a list of potential comps to the appraiser for him to consider a revision.

Ultimately, it all worked out, but based on my laziness, it almost didn’t. Just another good reminder that — in most cases — we hold the key to our own destiny; if you want to be successful in this business, don’t leave things to chance…