Clovis Home Values
Clovis Home Info.
Search by Clovis School
- Buchanan High School
- Clovis High School
- Clovis East High School
- Clovis North High School
- Clovis West High School
- Clovis Unified School District
Low Home Appraisal? Appeal It!
September 16th, 2009
Low Home Appraisal? Appeal It!
Murphy’s law is alive and well in today’s tough real estate market. If anything can go wrong, it probably will. So what happens after you finally find a buyer for your Clovis home, but find out a few weeks later that your home didn’t appraise high enough? Now that the bank won’t finance the agreed upon purchase price – your buyer wants to walk. What do you do? We have the answer: appeal it!
Low Clovis Home Appraisals
Many Clovis buyers and sellers are finding out that in today’s Clovis real estate market market, that homes aren’t worth what they thought they were. At least not in the eyes of appraisers who are hired by lenders to calculate the value of the seller’s home. It used to be that the value of a home was what a “ready, willing and able buyer” would pay for it. While that’s still true, things are more complicated now and home appraisals are not an exact science.
So what do you do if your home appraises lower than you think it should be? Appeal the appraisal to your lender. But there’s a catch. To appeal an appraisal, you first need to find out whether yours is a “full-blown” appraisal or an electronic one. Some lenders use automated valuations to speed up the process and cut costs but these types of appraisals are notoriously inaccurate. The same is true of “drive-by appraisals” where the appraiser simply drives by a Clovis home and never goes inside to do the valuation.
If your lender is relying on an electronic or a drive-by, ask to have your home valued by someone who makes an appointment to view your home and then compares it with others in the neighborhood. In most cases, lenders will agree to do another appraisal — especially if you’re willing to pay $200-$300 to cover the cost.
However, if an appraiser actually came to your Clovis home and performed a full-blown appraisal, your appeal becomes a little more problematic and challenging. You can still appeal it, but how you do that matters — a lot.
No one likes to be told “you’re wrong!” so use decorum in your request. Shower the appraiser with kindness instead of your frustrations and simply request that s/he take a second look. An alternaive is to ask for a second opinion from another appraiser, but the second valuation must be more than 5% higher than the first (anything less is considered an acceptable difference). Also keep in mind that even if the second appraisal is much higher than the first, the LENDER, not you, gets to pick the appraisal on which the loan is based. After all, it’s their money.
That’s why we recommend you stick with the first appraiser and politely point out the strengths of your Clovis home and other comparable homes (known as comps. A comp is a property of the same size, location, and features as the one being appraised. Keep in mind, however, the next door neighbors home which sold over 1 year ago is probably no longer a good comp. The more comps, and more recent the sale, the better.
Clovis Foreclosures and Short Sales
Keep in mind that many (if not most) of the the comps today are Clovis foreclosures or short sales. These comps likely will be far lower than your Clovis home. Ideally you want to find as many differences (in your favor) as possible from any Clovis foreclosures and short sales . For example, perhaps the foreclosed home was missing the entire kitchen, had a significantly smaller lot, or only had 3 bedrooms instead of 4 like your home. The more differences you can point out to justify the value of your Clovis home the better.
Clovis Real Estate
The Clovis real estate market is dynamic and it changes continually. Just when you think things are headed one direction, they shift. We’re Clovis Experts so you can count on us to keep you updated on the Clovis housing market. Just let us know if there’s anything we can do to help or if you have any questions.
Clovis Real Estate − "The Clovis Home Experts"Leave a Reply
Contact Us
[...] Clovis area. Because of this, their appraisals often times are much lower than expected. You can appeal low appraisals, but it’s a time-consuming and complicated [...]