3 Tips to Shorten Your Home Appraisal Process and Turn Times

No matter if you’re planning to put your home for sale or refinancing your mortgage, lenders, sellers, and buyers alike need to get professional appraisers to help determine the real value of a home. Unfortunately, working with licensed appraisers can be a difficult task. From slow turn times to increasingly high fees, lenders and buyers face various problems when acquiring an appraisal.

In fact, in-depth research reveals that appraisal turn times in certain regions like the Pacific Northwest is double that of neighboring regions. Plus, the sudden increase in supply and demand for appraisers resulted in a spike in appraiser fees. Luckily, there are several ways you can shorten the home appraisal process. Here we discuss top tips to reduce turn times:

Why Get a Home Appraisal?
No matter if you’re purchasing a new house or selling one, you’ll need an accurate home appraisal. Let’s see what causes people to seek a home appraisal:

• If you’re buying a property, you must get an appropriate home appraisal to protect yourself from overpaying.
• In case you and your partner are getting a divorce, an accurate appraiser helps ensure the division of assets is on fairgrounds.
• You may require an in-depth analysis of your property’s worth before filing for bankruptcy. It is because the court typically needs to understand the exact value of your property.
• PMI, otherwise known as private mortgage insurance, are typically necessary only in conventional loans with down payment lower than 20%. Thus, an accurate appraisal revealing that you have a minimum of 20% equity in your home helps you eliminate a PMI.
• Some states calculate property taxes based on the home’s market value. Getting a reappraisal may help reduce payable taxes.
• If you’re looking for additional loans, you’ll need to get a home appraisal since these facilitate different aspects of the process.

You’ll require a home appraisal report before refinancing your home. The reason being that the report helps ensure the refinanced loan amount matches the value of the house.

How Long Does a Home Appraisal Take?
An appraisal may take anywhere between two days to a whole week from when buyers, sellers, and lenders request one. The time necessary to gauge a property may differ based on several characteristics, including property size, age, condition, and the appraiser’s approach to appraise the property.

Top 3 Tips to Shorten Your Home Appraisal Process
Dealing with home appraisals can be a hassle. Here we discuss ways you can shorten your home appraisal process:

1. Find Out Turn Times in Your Neighborhood
   Seek the turn times in your appraisal region to better understand how long the appraisal process may last. This also helps lenders prepare clients for the appraisal process as well. It’s not a guarantee that merely knowing appraisal turn times can help shorten the timing.
   However, it’s possible that finding knowledge relevant to your property and communicating it with your appraiser may help improve turn time by saving both parties the trouble of discussing things back and forth. It’s about setting proper expectations upfront.
2. Build a Robust Network
   There’s a possibility you may not be working alongside an appraisal management company, which means that you’re not leveraging any appraisal network.
   Here, lenders should consider conducting in-depth research to find out their appraisal department’s working and how it compares to other ones in your area. Curate a benchmark report to figure out ways your appraiser and their turn-times are trending.
   Make sure you spend some time reviewing and comparing appraiser reviews. After that, develop a network of adept, knowledgeable, and reliable appraisers. The better your network, the faster access you’ll have to lead appraisers that get your job done in the least possible time
3. Prepare Yourself
   Step up your prep game by learning changing regulations and the impact they have on appraisals. Not only does it help you learn the ins and outs of appraisals, but it also helps prevent potential delays.
   Track appraisal trends and learn to predict the latest real estate and appraisal world trends. Moreover, ensure your bank remains on top of regulations to facilitate the prediction process.

What Features Does an Appraiser Look for?
One other excellent way to prepare yourself for a home appraisal to help shorten the process is by collating information about your home and its unique characteristics. However, for this, homeowners need to be aware of what features grab an appraiser’s attention. These are as follows:

• Exterior and the interior condition of the house
• Total number of rooms alongside improvements to bedrooms and restrooms

Repairs and modifications of kitchens, baths, windows, roof, and the HVAC systems in the past 15 years. They may also consider whether the improvements ensure your house is up-to-date with modern living standards

• The functionality of the house, i.e., layout, interior design, and functional obsolescence
• The condition of your property’s electrical, HVAC, and plumbing systems
• Curb appeal, including the condition of your lawn.
• Exterior amenities like porches, attached garages, decks, pools, and hot tubs can also expedite your property’s worth.
• The location, size, and age of your home
• Is the house clutter-free or untidy?

Features that downgrade your home’s appeal are inconsistent exterior appearance, cracks in the window, broken roof, and so on.

The Takeaway
Learning your neighborhood’s turn times gives you a pretty solid idea of what they will be like in your area. Studying the appraiser process in-depth and spotting things they look for can help lenders adequately prepare themselves before the appraiser process.

In addition, aggregating information about unique characteristics and offering records help decrease turn times. By keeping these tips and techniques in mind, you can shorten the home appraisal process.

Seeking an insightful appraisal? Reach out to our professionals here at AmeriMac to connect with expert appraisers who provide in-depth appraisals within record time and according to your needs. Our highly trained team ensures you receive it in 5 to 7 days!