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.

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.