Trying to find out the appraised value of your home? If you’ve just had your home appraised, all you have to do is contact your lender. They will provide you with a copy of the appraisal. If you’re looking at your appraisal report and want to understand your home’s appraised value, these are the most important items to look for.

First, get information about your home. If you’re not sure of the square footage of your home, go to your county or city’s website and find basic information about your home. Most cities will have this online. If your city does not have this basic information on the web, go to the courthouse and look it up. You absolutely have to know what the county says about your house before you can start looking at the appraisal.

Once you find this basic information, look at the appraisal and make sure the information you collected from the county matches the appraisal. The square footage from the main level of your home will be listed on the grid page under GLA (Gross Living Area). The basement square footage will be listed below this. Check the lot size and see if they are similar. Most appraisers will get this right, but just check to be sure.

Now the big question is whether the appraiser used the correct comparable sales. How far can an appraiser go to find comparable sales? These are the tough questions, but here are some basic guidelines. If you are in town, sales will be 1/2 mile to 1 mile from your home. The closer the comparable sale is, the better it is. If not, the appraiser will have written in the appraisal why you had to go outside the 1/2 mile. If you are in a suburban area, outside of town, but still close to town, comparable sales may be within a mile of the subject. If you’re in the county, it all depends. In some areas, all of your comparable sales will be within 3-5 miles. In other areas, your comparable sales will be within 25 to 30 miles of each other. It all depends on what your home is offering and what the appraiser thought were the best comparable sales.

Can an appraiser break these rules? Yes, they can, as long as they explain why they used the sales that they felt were the best that support the value of their home.

What about the cost-to-value approach? This value approach is typically placed in the appraisal and is a completely separate value from the comparable sales approach used in the appraisal grid. The cost approach to valuing less depreciation is generally in line with the comparable sales approach. This means that the two numbers will be closed. Many times, it is a bit higher as it is considered to set the higher end of the price range, but this is not always the case. In some cases, the cost to build a house will be more than you can sell the house for and vice versa. Either way, less emphasis is placed on the cost approach to determining value, in most cases, because it doesn’t tell you what the market is willing to pay for homes in your area. And this is what the bank wants to know.

If you don’t agree with the value of your home, what should you do now? If you disagree with your home’s appraised value, ask a real estate agent to pull up some comparable sales to see if there are other sales in the area that may have been used to determine your home’s value. Make sure the real estate agent finds nearby sales within a year or more recent. Or better yet, hire an appraiser to give you a second opinion on value. Or you can search free websites to see if you can get a list of comparable sales and determine if they are better than what the appraiser used. Better means more recent sales, more like your home, has similar improvements to your home, and offers similar square footage and/or amenities as your home. If you only shoot for a price, the appraiser will easily ignore the use of the sales, especially if they are not even similar to your house.

Can you change the appraised value of your home? YES. I’ve appraised houses that I’ve appraised at $75,000 plus six months before, but I’ve also appraised houses that I’ve appraised six months ago where the value has decreased by $40,000. It just depends on everything. You can also switch from one appraiser to another, as each appraiser will decide which comparable sales are the best homes to compare to the subject (your home). If your home is a good fit (looks like other homes in your area), you’ll find that the values ​​will be fairly close. If your house doesn’t meet the requirements (it doesn’t look like any house in the area), the values ​​could be significantly different.