The Importance of the Home Appraiser

There is a quote from the National Association of Realtors that just recently came out that stated that
19% of realtors do not interact with appraisers. And I find that the most interesting aspect of the job in
general. When you go to list a home, your job is to get it all the way from listing contract to closing table.
And part of that is working with the appraiser.

Just recently, I had an appraiser that did not appraise my property at the agreed upon purchase price.
And it was hours upon hours of work, combating that and refuting his comps, refuting his opinion of
value, in order to get my seller as close as I could get to the agreed upon price point. So let's back up a
little bit. When we have listings under contract and we work with the appraisers, our very first job is to
actually meet with the appraiser at the property.

When I meet with an appraiser at a property, I bring floor plans. I bring recently sold. I even bring comps
that are currently under contract to let them know that I know what it's going to close at. I know that
banks don't like that. They want to work with six months past. They want to work with things that have
already sold. But I feel like, since the pandemic, you've got to look at what's under contract. That kind of
determines how the market is going to go.

Myself, the agents on my team, this is how we work with appraisers. I don't think I've ever had a listing
where I did not meet with the appraiser at the property. In the seven plus years I've been doing this job,
with the over 250 transactions I've been successful, I think I've had four properties not appraised. The
most recent one was this one that I'm under contract with now. And it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work
for the appraiser, and it's a lot of work on the agent's part, when it doesn't appraise.

But it's important to know the market, be boots on the ground and have enough data to refute the
appraiser's opinion of value. And fortunately, based on the hard work, the data that we were able to
supply, very heavy conversations that we had, we were able to change the appraiser's opinion of value
by 5%.