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Does the new dishwasher help? The appraiser laughed, kindly.

First rental purchase, closing in a few weeks. I got permission to be at the appraisal because I wanted to see how it worked and because I'm nervous about everything right now.

The seller had put in a new dishwasher and a new range about a month before listing, both still with stickers on them. I asked the appraiser, when he came through the kitchen, whether that helped the number. He laughed, not meanly, and said something like "a little, less than you'd think, and less than they spent." Then he said the things that move his number the most in this price range are square footage, bedroom and bathroom count, garage, lot, and condition overall.

He spent longer on the roof from the driveway than he did in the kitchen. He asked me twice about the age of the furnace and I didn't know, so he went and read the label.

What surprised me was how much of it was him talking to himself out loud. He'd say "okay so that's original" or "somebody did this themselves" and keep moving. Once he said "that's a nice job actually" about the bathroom tile and I felt weirdly proud of a house I don't own yet.

Came in at contract exactly, which I'm told means nothing bad happened.

12 replies

The appliance answer is the single most useful sentence a first time buyer can hear. New appliances sell a house faster. They do very little to a value opinion.

He read the furnace label because condition and remaining life show up in his condition rating and the rating drives adjustments. Small thing, does real work in the grid.

@thicket that makes sense of something else then. He wrote something on his tablet after the furnace and then went back to the panel and photographed it a second time. I assumed he'd fumbled the first picture.

@tally it happens a lot because contract price is itself evidence of market value, it's an arm's length agreement between a willing buyer and seller. An appraiser who lands on it isn't necessarily rubber stamping. Landing on it every single time across a hundred files is a different conversation.

The roof from the driveway thing is standard. They're not climbing anything. Anything they can't see gets a condition assumption and sometimes a note that the value assumes no hidden defects.

@ember same, and I asked it out loud once in a room and got a look. The inspection is for you. The appraisal is for the lender. Different person, different job, both bill you.