8 Tips for Raising Your Home Appraisal

We had our house appraised a few times for re-finances. Depends on the bank and their appraisers. We had some just take pictures of the outside. Our latest appraiser actually took pictures of every room in the house. We saw the report and were dumbstruck at the pics and comments. Thankfully all positive and our appraisal was very good.

As an appraiser myself I can tell you that over half the tips mentioned above have nothing to do with appraising. An appraiser could care less about what kind of TV you have hanging on a wall. TV’s are personal property and have nothing to do with an appraised value… Second, a messy house has nothing to do with an appraisal. An experianced appraiser will just look thru the garbage. Garbage is personal property… Uncut grass in your front yard has no bearing on value either… Also, adding a new $100 faucet in the kitchen will NOT be considered an update and will add no value. .. The amount of furniture in a home has nothing to do with value either…..where do people get this stuff from? The list/tips above has to do more with selling and marketing a house, not getting added value? Stupid article!

This is what is wrong with the Appraisal / Loan game. Dress up a few thing and get 24,000 more dollars. What a joke. And we wonder why Realtors overpriced houses around the country and now the market corrected itself because they were so bloated. All this fake inflation is crazy. WAKE UP AMERICA!!!!!

Years ago my dad was a certified Senior Real Estate Appraiser who was also a mortgage loan officer at the local savings and loan. When he appraised a house, he put a value on the structure, not the contents! He would crawl under the house (not just peek), knock on the walls, and even take his pocket knife out and discreetly check the woodwork for softness. It was a thorough, honest appraisal that was in no way based on furnishings or clutter but on the soundness of the structure. As a banker myself I have seen that today’s appraisals are based on appearance rather than soundness. It doesn’t matter if there are high-end appliances or fixtures when the floors or ceilings are rotten!

$1,600 invested showed a $24,000 gain? Better than Apple stock. What are they crying about? I would do something about the ‘new’ entertainment system. Looks like the tv and dvd player are poopin’ in the basket.
It is a pretty good idea to wash your car before you take it to the dealer for a trade. It ain’t rocket science.

An experienced and qualified Appraiser performs a site visit to the property and examines the home as if NO personal property is there. Outdated bathrooms, kitchen and other amenities (Or lack of) which need to be updated / upgraded could have an effect on Value of a home. Appraiser’s are NOT ALLOWED to be misleading – Your story is MISLEADING. The Correspondent just solved the housing crisis. Sounds as if we can all put 80″ Plasma televisions in our homes this will increase the values our homes.

I am a Certified Appraiser, and when people tell me “Please overlook the mess” I tell them all the same answer.

“It won’t help you if you clean it, and it won’t hurt you if you don’t. I look at the house as if it is empty. ”

This article is very misleading, and Ms. Corcoran is not as smart as she wants to think she is.

This story brings up a major issue with housing… Appraisals are killing real estate deals. If you have two parties that have agreed on a transaction; who’s the appraiser to say the market value of the home is a number lower than that. Sellers are reducing the price of their homes, getting negotiated on inspection items that may never get fixed by the Buyer, and then the last kick in the head is the appraisal coming back less and screwing up the whole transaction. With this mentality, how do you ever turn the housing market and prices around?
This story is crazy showing a appraiser telling someone they should change their kitchen sink faucet, get a new TV, and cut back bushes at their entry. Those affect an interested buyer, but again..if the Seller and Buyer agree on a price, that’s market value.

I have been appraising for 28 years. It is hard to believe that Ms. Palmisano is affiliated with an appraisal office; I assume she is not a licensed appraiser since she sounds more like an interior decorator. I would also like to know if the appraiser at the end of the story was from her office, which would be a bit of a conflict, or if he knew what role he was playing in this story. We also don’t know if the first appraiser knew what he was doing, he may have been incompetent. With the changes in the lending industry over the past five years, you stand a much better chance of having an appraiser sent to your home by an appraisal management company who has never even been to your town before. At least once a week I have a conversation with someone from a management company who does not care if the job they are trying to assign to an appraiser (ANY appraiser) is going to be handled with an appropriate level of expertise.
The items in this story were by and large not appraisal issues, but decorating issues. An untrimmed bush might put off a potential buyer, but they have zero impact on value. Replacing a faucet in a dated kitchen is not considered an update. A competent appraiser should be able to see past household clutter. No one cares what kind of tv you have; it is personal property that is most likely moving out with the seller. We look in your closets, we don’t need signs pointing out your favorite closet.
The difference in these appraisals was not due to these “helpful hints”, it was due to one or both of these appraisers not being very good at their job.
And finally, the only accurate part of this piece was the assumption on the part of the reporter and homeowners was that if there are two appraisals with different values, that the one that comes in higher is the correct one. Because I never get a call from someone complaining that there is a problem with an appraisal I did because it is higher than the other appraisal that was done before, I only seem to be wrong if my number is lower than what they were hoping for.
It was nice that you worked Barbara Corcoaran in so that you could have a free promo for Shark Tank, but maybe she needs to stick to investing in cookie companies and arguing with Mr. Wonderful.
This piece was misleading. You want your house value to increase? Move it to a better neighborhood.

glad to see many others feel the same as i do. will abc world news give equal time to appraisers that actually know what they are talking about? all the years and thousands of reports i have completed, not once “hacked” a value.

In the aftermath of the housing bubble, much was documented reflecting how the actions of mortgage brokers and appraisers fueled the problem. No major indictments or arrests have been made, and the only significant procedural change was adoption of The Home Valuation Code of Conduct which bans lenders and brokers from pressuring appraisers on loans eligible for purchase by Fannie and Freddie. So does that mean the Real Estate Appraisal Process now stands on solid ground worthy of the trust of average homeowners? If my recent experience in refinancing my home mortgage is an indicator, the answer is a solid NO!
It turns out that the appraisal done for that refinancing came back very low based upon my reading of recent neighborhood sales and other factors. I appealed to the lender with a list of specific issues, including for example the use of a comparable sale that was actually a sheriff sale, and not making any adjustments. In the end, the appraiser came back standing their ground and not adjusting. I therefore shopped around with other lenders and had two more appraisals performed. The two subsequent appraisals came in less than one per-cent apart from each other, and almost a third higher than the appraisal in dispute!
So I filed a complaint with the Licensing Board in the Pennsylvania State AG’s office. They “reviewed for compliance with the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice” (USPAP) and found “that the circumstances in this case do not permit formal prosecution” and closed the matter.
So I reviewed the USPAP. I found at least two rules that were violated:
Rule 1-1 (c) – not render appraisal services in a careless or negligent manner, such as by making a series of errors that, although individually might not significantly affect the results of an appraisal, in the aggregate affects the credibility of those results.
This USPAP Rule was violated because of the grossly inconsistent valuation relative to two other appraisals as well as other valuations, and was driven by the multiple issues I raised.
and
Rule 2-1 Each written or oral real property appraisal report must: (a) clearly and accurately set forth the appraisal in a manner that will not be misleading; (b) contain sufficient information to enable the intended users of the appraisal to understand the report properly; and (c) clearly and accurately disclose all assumptions, extraordinary assumptions, hypothetical conditions, and limiting conditions used in the assignment.
This USPAP Rule was violated because the appraisal did not clearly and accurately provide sufficient information to reconcile its’ comparable sales range of a price from $376,000 to $490,000 and the appraisals own finding that “PREDOMINANT MARKET VALUES FOR SINGLE FAMILY HOMES IN THE SUBJECT’S GENERAL MARKETING AREA RANGE BETWEEN $546,000 AND $556,000!
My next step was to get support for my understanding of these USPAP Rules by going to the source, the Appraisal Foundation – Authorized by Congress as the Source of Appraisal Standards and Appraiser Qualifications. Their response was “We’re sorry, but we are prohibited from evaluating an appraisal for USPAP compliance; that is the exclusive purview of the state appraiser regulatory agencies. However, if you believe your state appraiser regulatory did not adequately address your complaint, you may consider contacting the Appraisal Subcommittee (ASC), which is the federal agency responsible for the oversight of the various state appraiser regulatory agencies.”
So, on to the Appraisal Subcommittee I went. I was told that the ASC does not have responsibility for the decisions of the PA Licensing Board of Appraisers on a case by case basis, but rather only its’ overall program performance. However, they did provide me the contacts within the Pennsylvania system who may be able to address the specifics of the case that I described, given the licensing board’s decision not to take action without addressing any of the specific issues I raised.

So what are the primary findings about residential appraisals?

1. Responsibility for the Rules defining the Appraisal Process, oversight of the effectiveness of the rules, interpretation of the rules and fact gathering about specific appraisal cases are spread across several government and quasi government bureaucracies.
2. Although being responsible for program oversight, the ASC seems to lack basic understanding of the specific processes or the appropriate contacts within their supervision.
3. Despite being initiated by my action (a refinance) and pertaining solely to my property, the findings of the State Prosecutor’s Office are shrouded in a veil of secrecy with no responsibility to respond to specific questions or issues, apparently in direct opposition to PA’s Right to Know Act.
4. “Judgement Calls” are allowed to be made, but are not required to be substantiated even if those “Judgements” affect the ultimate rights of the citizen.
5. None of the players appear concerned that ultimately they are supporting a process that allowed for a Licensed Appraiser to prepare an appraisal that was one-third below two other Licensed Appraisals, as well as other valuations (assessment data, on-line valuation sites, construction value, etc.).
6. When faced with an appeal including specific allegations, Reviewer’s can point to regulations (USPAP) to support their findings, but are not obligated to defend those decisions even in the face of specific apparent conflicts or misinterpretations.

Given that traditional financing has a twenty per cent equity buffer, an understatement of valuation by an appraisal by another thirty per cent results in homeowner needing fifty per cent equity in the worse case, to finance their home. Don’t homeowners deserve better?

Yes I did get the loan. That is NOT the point. The point is that an unqualified appraiser is out their and will be causing problems for future unsuspecting home owners. I would like to improve upon the process, not just use it.

I have been an appraiser for over 27 years and this article sounds like it was written by a realtor not someone associated with an appraisal consulting firm. None of the 8 points are valid in regards to appraising; how on earth did this garbage of an article like this get printed?????

This article is misleading and hogwash!!!!!!!! I have been an appraiser for 30 years, and I don’t know any appraisers that are influenced by a messy house or yard! Geesh, do your homework. This is a careless article. The only item that makes actual sense is #7…it is good to have things in working order or it will be reported on the report. PLEASE SUBMIT A FOLLOW UP WITH MORE FACTUAL AND APPROPRIATE “TIPS” ….the #1 thing could be…Don’t THINK you know the value of your home because of what your neighbors house is listed at. I could go on.