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Property appraisal: why is it important?

Having your home professionally appraised can be equally daunting or satisfying, but however you feel about it, it is an important step if you are considering placing your home on the market.

A home appraisal helps determine the fair price of your property. If you are refinancing, banks will require a professional property evaluation in order to place a monetary valuation on the property. This should not be confused with a home inspection, which outlines the conditions of the property and what may need to be repaired, but does not address home value.

How can a home appraisal help the sale of a property?

Pricing your home is by far one of the trickiest aspects of selling a home. Price too low and buyers will assume there’s something wrong and you are trying to dump it. Price too high and you could cut out your target group, spend longer on the market and end up selling the home for significantly less.

Having the right price when listing your home makes it more likely to attract the right buyers. This is because pricing your home over market value in the hopes that someone will be willing to pay the higher price might mean that many buyers don’t even see your home as an option. Depending on the location and market, buyers may be looking for homes only within a certain price range. If you choose to mark up your home from $699,000 to $710,000, for example, buyers looking for homes under $700,000 will not see your home at all, even if you were happy to accept $700,000.

The right price means more confident buyers

It’s a strange thing about selling a home, but most buyers are expecting the vendor to tell them what their home is worth. If you offer your home for a fair price that is similar to comparable homes in the neighborhood, buyers will feel better about the transaction. They may reason that, since you’ve done your homework about the price, you will most likely have done it about the home itself.

Pay attention to the appraisal

Ultimately, you will be better off listening to the advice of a professional and getting the right price for your home the first time around. If you price too high and have no bites, you could be forced to go lower on your price and may end up selling for much less than you expected.