Should You Appraise Your Home Before Selling It?

Recently, Rick Schwartz Homes Corporate held its annual off-site planning and bonding meeting. This took the form of Shereen and me going to Pop’s Pizza Plus in Danbury and putting the charge on my business VISA card.

One of the items we covered at our meeting was to review web data from the last year. In looking at the tracking results from the Rick Schwartz Blog, we found that in the 17 months since we started the blog, two particular articles have far and away had the most hits.

Our posting from June of 2008 “What is the difference between appraised value and assessed value?” has been viewed 1,270 times which makes it the number one article by leaps and bounds.

The number two posting is “What if your home doesn’t appraise for the selling price?” This has had 721 hits since it posted in May of 2008.

It seems that the subject of appraisals is a “hot topic”. So – here’s a bit more.

We polled some top Realtors in the area and asked them the following question: Would you recommend to your clients that they pay for an appraisal prior to putting their home on the market?

4 out of 5 responded that in today’s market where prices have been changing so rapidly, having an appraisal done can help sell a home more quickly.

Here’s the rationale.

First of all, a licensed appraiser will perform a detailed analysis of all the factors that make up the value of a home. The tools and training that an appraiser has at his disposal are the most comprehensive available. In addition to looking at recent market activity, they calculate your home’s value using a few other methods – one based on replacement cost and one based on square footage.

Averaging these values together and then using a series of “adds and subtracts” based on the specifics of your property will provide you with an accurate value to aid in determining what list price to apply.

Remember – this is his primary activity – determining the value of homes. The value put on a home by an appraiser is what a lender will use in making decisions about loaning money to your potential buyer. (They will do their own appraisal at the time of the sale.)

Sometimes, when your Realtor provides you with a market analysis, it may differ from your own perception of what the house should sell for. Having this third party expert who has no stake whatsoever in your sale can arbitrate the difference and help you set an accurate price.

Another value to having an appraisal up front, is that, when it comes time to negotiate, you and your Realtor have 3rd party support for your position. You aren’t obligated to share the appraisal with anyone – you paid for it and it’s yours, so if you choose to try and sell your house for more, that’s your business – so long as the buyer can obtain a mortgage, should he need one. If, however, you price your house correctly, using the appraisal as a guide, it can, pretty quickly, take the wind out of the sails of someone who is trying to low-ball you.

To make sure that I’m presenting a balanced article, there is one situation where it may be unnecessary to do this. If you live in a neighborhood with many similar houses (such as a planned community or a condominium/townhouse complex) and a fair amount of recent market activity, then the “right” price should be fairly simple to determine.

Your Realtor can help you find a licensed appraiser in your area.

Home Staging Advice? Really Rick?

When I told my wife, Shereen, that I was going to write an article about helping people make their houses look better when putting them up for sale – she just smiled, rolled her eyes and walked away. She, of course is more aware than anyone that I have absolutely no decorating or style sense.  I’m color blind, I hang paintings way too high and don’t have any real appreciation for nice curtains or furniture.

So, while I can’t tell you the best shade of off-white to paint your walls when selling, I do know that one of the most important things you can do to make your house look better is to make it look bigger.

It’s really an optical illusion but the fact is that the less stuff you have in your house, the bigger it seems.  So when you are putting your home up for sale, get rid of everything that you don’t need to live.

If it’s winter, empty your closets of summer clothes. A closet which is full, looks cramped.  If the rod that you hang your shirts on has “air” in between the shirts, it will look like you have more closet space.

Now that the holidays have passed, take all your cool food preparation devices off of your kitchen counters.  The bread maker, the pasta maker and the cappuccino machine are a lot of fun but they hide your counter space.  You don’t need to impress home buyers with your culinary talents, you need to impress them with how much space there is for their own things.

Go up to the spare bedroom, where you put all the odds and ends furniture that you never use.  Get rid of it.  An empty room looks bigger than a full one.

Bare your walls.   The photo gallery that fills the long wall in your hallway has great sentimental value for you, but at the risk of sounding harsh – buyers don’t care about your annual family portraits or pictures of your ancestors.  An empty wall is a blank canvass where they can imagine their own family.

Empty the garage. Keep in mind that a garage is a place to keep cars.  Even though you may have slowly let it become a place to store everything you’ve accumulated and don’t use very often – your buyers may, oddly enough, actually be looking for a garage to use as a garage.

What do you with it all?

Keep in mind that if you’re selling, you’ll be moving. When people move, they pack some stuff and trash some stuff. So, go room by room, and pick out what you’ll be taking with you, what you’ll be giving to someone else, and what you will be getting rid of.

For the stuff you’ll be taking with you but you don’t need right now, pack it up as if you were moving and put it in a self-storage facility.  There are lots of these around.  If you’re worried about leaving your things there, go check them out. Some are better than others.  Many have climate controlled compartments to avoid freezing or humidity problems.

For the things you will be giving to friends or relatives, do it now.  Move your unwanted stuff to someone else’s house.

Although moving things to a storage facility or to your sister’s house may cost you money – keep in mind that your movers will have less stuff to move when you do go to your new home so much of the expense of doing it in two stages will be a wash.

For the stuff you want to get rid of, either rent a truck and find out about your town dump or else hire a junk-removal company like 1 800 Got Junk.

Whatever you decide to do with it – just get rid of as much stuff as you can.  It will make your house seem bigger – and that can go a long way in how quickly it sells – and how much you get for it.