My husband and I recently had our home appraised in anticipation of refinancing our home loan. Our third child was born 18 months ago, and our house feels small for our growing family. We would like to put on a small addition because that seemed easier than buying a new home, but we didn’t have enough in savings right now to go ahead with the work. This is the first homes we’ve owned, and since we had it built 7 years ago, we’ve never had the need for an appraisal. I started researching what an appraisal consists of, and what we could do to help the appraiser.

A home appraisal gives the lender a picture of the current market value of your home. An appraiser takes a look at your home, the square footage, and the amenities of your home. In addition, they also look at any permanent improvements you have made to the property.

We wanted to help our appraiser as much as possible. We had a copy of the original plans for our home, as well as a copy of the plot survey. The appraiser needed to measure the property herself, but appreciated being able to write her information on the copies we provided. It was nice to know that the numbers matched up.

Since purchasing our home, we had an in-ground pool installed and landscaped our large backyard. We gave her the information about the pool, so she would have the size and depth. We also talked about the pool fence we had installed, and some other features in our backyard.

An appraisal is not the same as a home inspection, but the appraiser does note any obvious problems. Thankfully, we do not have crumbling foundations or cracked concrete on our property. Our home is also located on a public road, so there are no right-of-way concerns.

After visiting our home, the appraiser looked at recent sales of similar properties in the area. These are often called “comps”, which stands for “comparable.” These comps should reflect a similar neighborhood, similar square footage, and similar amenities. We knew this would be difficult, because many of the homes in our neighborhood were foreclosed in the last couple years, and were sold at a steep discount by banks. Part of the appraisal also discusses the current real estate market in the area and how long it takes for homes in the area to sell. With the current drop in home values and lengthy selling times, we knew that our home value would likely be negatively affected.

Many of the articles I read about appraisals mentioned that it shouldn’t really matter if your house was cluttered or messy, since the appraiser was looking for structural items. I decided to take the time and effort to do a thorough cleaning of our home before the appraisal. Even though the cleanliness of your home isn’t supposed to matter, I think it could have a negative impact on the impression of your home. I wanted the appraiser to see that we took care of our home, and took pride in how it looked. We made sure the yard was also neat and manicured before the appraisal.

Our appraisal came back lower than we hoped for. While we have earned equity in our home, we know from other sales in the last few years that our home value has dropped about $50,000 from just 2 years ago. It was sobering to see the actual figures, but we were glad that we had the current information. I think the efforts we took to help the appraiser and present a clean, neat home helped our home’s value.

In this tough real estate market, I think it’s important to do all that you can to make your appraisal as positive as possible. You can’t control the sales prices of near-by homes, but you can present your home in the best light possible.

in case you were curious, we decided not to refinance at this time.  We’ll rearrange a few things, get rid of a few things, find room for all of us in the home we have, and keep the same mortgage payment.  I think it’s the right decision for now.