When a property appraised BELOW what you're selling it for, it can cause problems when you're selling your home and possibly cause your sale to fall out.

Kyle Whissel with Whissel Realty Group walks through the process of selling your home when it comes to an appraisal.

1. Get in escrow (accept an offer on your home)

2. During the contingency period, the appraiser reaches out to the real estate agent (us) representing the home seller (you).

3. How the agent responds (a typical agent vs what we do)

How do you avoid your sale falling apart due to a low appraisal?

Hey, guys, it's Kyle with Whissel Realty Group here and what I want to talk about today is the importance of the appraisal when selling your home and how to avoid a low appraisal because when that property appraises below what it's in escrow at, that can actually cause a deal to all apart, and I don't want that to happen to you. So here's how the process works.

In San Diego, once you go into escrow, a buyer's going to have a contingency period. Within that contingency period, one of the things that the buyer is going to do is have an appraisal done on your home. A bank is going to request that that appraisal be done because a bank wants to make sure that if a buyer is paying a million bucks for your home, the home's worth at least a million dollars, if not more. The property's worth $900,000, you're paying a million, the bank doesn't want to loan you a million bucks because they're basically upside down from day one. So the bank's kind of looking out for you and they're looking out for themselves to make sure that if you're buying a home, you're not overpaying for it.

So what ends up happening is once you're in escrow, the appraiser is going to reach out to the listing agent, typically it's going to be us. And so what a lot of agents do is, the appraiser will say, hey, I want to go do an appraisal Tuesday at two o'clock. And you'll say, okay, cool, here's a code to the lockbox. Thank you, let me know how it goes.

That is the worst thing that a real estate agent can do.

What we do here at Whissel Realty Group is once we get that phone call, we will say, hey, Tuesday at two o'clock sounds good. We'll meet you there so that we can provide you with access to that home. Then what we're going to do is we're going to talk to you and get an entire list of every improvement that you've ever made to the home. I want to know every dollar that you've spent on it and I'm going to put a detailed list together that I can provide to that appraiser when I meet him out at the property 'cause I want to make sure that all of that money that you've invested in your home that you get credit for all of that on the appraisal. So I'm going to get that detailed list from you. I'm also going to go onto the MLS and I'm going to pull a list of comparable homes that have sold in your area as well 'cause I don't want to leave it up to the appraiser to pull the comparable homes, I want to pull them to ensure that they see things in line with what the buyer saw.

And so we will personally meet the appraiser out at the property, we'll provide them access to it, we're going to give them that list of all of the improvements you've made to the home, we're going to give them a list of all the comparable sales in the area, and in the event that we have multiple offers on your home, we're going to show them all of those offers as well to help substantiate the fact that this was a hot home that multiple buyers wanted and there wasn't just one person willing to pay a million. "There was one to 995 and one at 990 and one at 985. We had four offers in that scenario on your home 'cause that is important." It's going to influence the appraiser.

Also, appraisers are going to help people that they like. So if we actually spend the time to meet them out there, build a little bit of a relationship with them and get them to like us, more often than not, they're going to try to help us, right? This is a relationship business, so if we build that relationship, that little bit's going to go a long way as well. So when we meet them out, we're going to provide those four things.

That's what's going to help ensure your appraisal doesn't come in low. That's going to be a list of the improvements you've made to the home, a list of the comparable sales in the area, all of the offers that were received and we're going to build that relationship. And by doing that, that's going to help ensure your appraisal comes in exactly where it needs to. We don't have any issues, we don't have to drop the price, the deal doesn't fall apart, your escrow closes on time as planned and you can make that move.

If you're thinking about making a move and you want to have our team going to bat for you, ensuring your appraisal comes in where it needs to, give us a call: 619-618-7997.

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