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Charley · Guest

I'm in the process of trying to maximize the appraisal price of my 3 bed room Condo. Is there anything I can do? Any recommendations on finding a quality appraiser?

Thanks!

nemmar · Site Admin

Charley,

Yes, there are definitely things you can do to screen appraisers for your condo. Think of real estate appraisers as you do any other profession - some people do excellent work and some people do horrible, unethical work for their clients.

1) View my online Real Estate Library page at http://www.nemmar.com/real-estate-State-Real-Appraiser-Boards.html which lists the web site and contact information for every State appraisal board. You need to contact the appraisal board in your State and find out if the appraisers you want to hire have/had any disciplinary actions against them or have/had their appraisal license/certification suspended or revoked at any time.

2) Ask the appraisers you want to hire what credentials they have. For example, if and what type of State appraisal license or certification do they have since not all licenses/certifications are the same. Some require more experience and training.

3) Make sure you know who the actual appraiser will be that comes to your condo to do the on-site inspection and appraisal research process. That's the person that you have to check their background info on as I mention above. I talk about this also in my Real Estate Appraisal From A to Z book because when you call an appraisal company they will probably give you the credentials of the owner or the top appraiser in that office as a reference to make your decision. However, when it comes time to do the actual appraiser, they may send out a more junior appraiser and the most experienced appraiser will be the Review Appraiser only. The Review Appraiser just reviews the report and research done by the actual appraiser that visiting your condo to appraise the property. Both the actual and Review Appraisers are held liable for the accuracy of everything in that written appraisal report because they both have to sign their names to the report before giving it to the client. However, sometimes the Review Appraiser will be lazy or too busy and they'll just sign-off on the report without doing a full, proper review of what the on-site appraiser actually did. I've seen MAI (Member of Appraisal Institute) designated appraisers do this as review appraisers even though MAI appraisers are supposed to be at the top of the field. So as I said, it's like any other profession where some people are greedy and lazy and don't fulfill their fiduciary responsibility to the client, and other people are honest and ethical and make sure the client gets what they paid for.

4) Tell the appraisers that you want to consider hiring that you want the names and contact information of at least 3 of their clients that they have done appraisals for within the last 3-6 months. The reason you want to specify the time period for the reference client is because if you don't then an appraiser who is NOT good may have some clients that were happy with his/her work from a long time ago and they will use them a the names for references for you to contact.

5) To learn ways to maximize the selling price of your condo then you will need to learn the details of what an appraiser actually does and how they estimate the market value of real estate. You can learn that if you read the articles in my online Real Estate Library http://www.nemmar.com/real-estate-library.html or read my Real Estate Appraisal From A to Z book http://www.nemmar.com/real-estate-appraisal.shtml .