Pre-Sale Appraisals?

[Anthony Torres]

Question....If I were thinking about selling my home without a real estate agent and wanted to know what the home would be worth prior to going full steam ahead, would I be able to contact an appraiser to provide me with an appraisal?

I would think this would be a huge market, especially considering many real estate agents list high knowing full well that even if someone were willing to pay the price the home will not appraise for the listing price. I may be using the term appraisal loosely but is there such a thing as a fair market analysis of sorts to assist homeowners looking to sell other then an AVM?

 

[The Warrior Monk]

Question....If I were thinking about selling my home without a real estate agent and wanted to know what the home would be worth prior to going full steam ahead, would I be able to contact an appraiser to provide me with an appraisal?

We do some of this on the residential side. Interestingly enough, there was a surge early last year of private bankers ordering appraisals prior to their clients signing the sales contract. They wanted to know what the property was worth prior to committing.

Half of my commercial work at the current time is from tenants wishing to purchase the property they are renting, and need a market value in fee simple estate.

 

[Anthony Torres]

Is the fee the same as a full appraisal? If not how much would you normally charge for such work and what is the correct terminology to use when ordering? Thanks.

 

[Josh Shapiro]

I actually market this to specific areas of town and get a pretty good response. I generally use a mailer that advertises pre-sale appraisals at a discounted fee. I can do this as I only market to specific areas. Great with clones. If all your jobs are in a specific area, all the market data stays the same week by week. I have about 15 templets that I use for each area and it covers just about every range of style, design, size and age in that area.

 

[The Warrior Monk]

Is the fee the same as a full appraisal? If not how much would you normally charge for such work and what is the correct terminology to use when ordering? Thanks.

Fees will depend on what the clients need. We do everything from a range of value to a narrative, plus everything in between. For example, a client might want a range of value, but may also want a list of sales and listings in the area with a brief description. If the client is out of area, they may also want a detailed description of market conditions.

 

[Ross (CO)]

I did one of those three months ago for a realty agent who was assisting his mother with her intent to sell her home since the husband passed away a year ago. It was time for her to move closer to another of her children in Cailfornia. She was my client, she signed the appraisal order, her realtor son was a second and mentioned-by-name intended user with explanation that he was assiting her with the future marketing process for her home. I gave not only an expression of "market value" but elaborated within my write-up that consideration of offered data on exposure time before-sale in her (exclusive) market area of the city, the %-of-original-list price that was the result of those agents' attempts to test the market's limits, the season of the year as impacting that exposure, the importance of an appropriate initial offering price so as to limit exposure time, and ended with a range of value expressed as a most-probable selling price.

Without saying it exactly....my conclusions told her that any offer she gets within that range should be prudently accepted and considered as a fair and reasonable expression of buyer demand for her property. How her realtor son advises her from that point in time might foretell a different experience. I would bet she does NOT want to get to October 1st and then realize that she has to ride out another winter until April 1st comes along. I charged a pre-paid fee and it was solely predicated on the discussed and expected amount of research and data presented to let her know that she will observe that I gave her intended use a measure of full and deserved attention. She did not flinch, and wrote my check on her kitchen countertop before I left the property. I gave that range as a spread of $25,000. I have looked in county recs and the MLS since then and not seen any indication of any activity yet.

Anthony......impart upon your mortgage broker contacts that the notion of a fixed-fee complimenting a certain reporting "form" is unsupported and in no way applies to any and all market areas in the country. Challenge your broker contacts to actually do some of their own research from the myriad of available sources so that they can know SOMETHING about a subject property and its market....BEFORE they phone an appraiser. A knowledgable and well-spoken client.....is a wonderful thing.

 

[Brian Weaver]

I do a fair amount of these for commercial/industrial properties.

 

[Annemieke Roell]

Question....If I were thinking about selling my home without a real estate agent and wanted to know what the home would be worth prior to going full steam ahead, would I be able to contact an appraiser to provide me with an appraisal?

Yes you can. We do them all the time. It is amazing to see how much money is left on the table with not only FSBOs but also Agent represented properties .......

 

[Thomas N. Morgan]

Yes, you probably could. Trouble is, most people think an appraiser can tell them how much you can get for your home. Nobody can do that.

If there is enough market data, an appraiser can tell you what they think your property would probably have sold for on a certain date, but they can't tell you what it will sell for in the future.

 

[Anthony Torres]

Thanks for all the great responses. Although I am not an appraiser if I were I think I would specifically target this area as one of my sources for generating revenue.

Being in New York, appreciation levels have been through the roof with average purchase prices in the 5 broughs of NYC being in the $550,000 to $600,000 price range for a SFR.

Problem is realtor business is hurting pretty bad right now as many don't want to pay a $25,000 commission to a realtor and as a result there are more and more FSBO's popping up everyday. However, knowing my market the way I do I can see many that are being listed for much higher than what many of the homes will appraise for. Many homeowners think just because the house next door sold for $600,000 they can the same or in most cases more.

I was in the process of selling my home and the realtor wanted to list the home for almost $40,000 than what it would appraise for. I know beacuse I had obtained financing on my home a few months earlier and was provided with a copy of the appraisal.

I would think more appraisers would target this market but many of the appraisers I work with don't even bother. Thanks to all again for the great responses.