What do they look at when they appraise your home for a refinance?

Sleepy Gee asked:


We are refinancing our home and as such, the bank is sending an appraiser over. What do they look at? Do they go through all the rooms and look at everything? How long does it usually take?

I’m mainly concerned that some rooms are messy and I have limited time tonight to straighten up. They scheduled this without much warning.

Lester

Tags: Refinance, Refinancing

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 24th, 2009 at 4:01 pm and is filed under Refinance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “What do they look at when they appraise your home for a refinance?”

1. dpower812 Says:
   May 28th, 2009 at 1:14 am

   Paula

   They want to see the structural condition of the house, number of rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms. They don’t really care if the rooms are messy. That has nothing to do with the condition and value of your home. They are going to look for features to compare to other homes that have sold in the area ( “comps” ). That will allow them to put an appropriate value on the house so the bank doesn’t lose out. If the bank loans you more money than the house is worth and something goes wrong, how will they get their money back? Good Luck.

2. Paul in San Diego Says:
   May 28th, 2009 at 7:19 am

   Lucy

   Don’t bother straightening up or anything. Appraisers are trained to look through clutter and just see what features a house has. Even if a house needs paint or other minor cosmetic issues, this will not significantly affect the value of a house. They’re looking mostly for structural features (how many bedrooms and bathrooms, square footage, views, and general condition).

   But, you might want to make a list of any improvements you may have made since the last time the house was appraised. This information will be used to determine the extent of how customized your house is. That is, they have a subjective scale of how “improved” or “remodeled” a house is. The more you’ve done, the higher you are on the scale and they may give you more value for it.

   But, don’t worry about messiness or clutter. They don’t care how good of a housekeeper you are.

   Oh and, they probably will look through all the rooms to make measurements to verify square footage, see if there’s closets, or whatever. It generally takes about a half hour to 45 minutes.