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How Do You Prepare Your Home for an Appraisal?

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One of the most important parts of the home sale process is the buyer’s appraisal of the property being sold. If you’re the home seller, how can you make sure your home is prepared for that appraisal?

An appraisal is done to ensure that the buyer’s lender has the confidence that whatever the buyer is paying for the home is legitimate based on the loan value. It’s not uncommon for appraisers in today’s market to over-scrutinize properties here in San Diego because values have gone up so quickly in the last two or three years.

Now, the first thing you can do to prepare your home for the appraisal is keep up your curb appeal. Make sure that the front yard is manicured and the walk-up to the property is presentable. You don’t have to go overboard, but the visual appearance from the curb has to be alluring.

Next, shift your focus inside and check that interior of the home is well maintained and everything is functioning properly. Appraisers will look for very specific things that are health and safety-related. Pay special attention to your heating system, as they will inspect that to see if it’s in order. Also, have all your smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors installed in the specific locations where they are required to be.

Appraisers will often ask if you’ve done any upgrades or improvements, so we help our clients prepare a list of improvements to give to the appraiser. It’s not unusual for someone from our team to be present during the appraisal to help you in any way we can. Our goal is to ensure the property appraises for what the buyer is paying so that the transaction moves forward and ends up closing.

If you have any questions or are thinking about selling your home, please feel free to reach out to me via phone or email. I would be happy to help you!

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