A home appraisal is an integral part of selling a home and must be done before you make a deal. However, an appraisal can go poorly if you don’t properly prepare and make your home open and available. It would help if you also upgraded its exterior and interior to keep it attractive and beautiful.
Thankfully, you can take many steps to improve your appraisal and get the results you want. These steps help to make your home more appealing and also make the assessment go more smoothly. Pay attention to each option and execute them to the best of your abilities to get excellent results.
Focus on Curb Appeal
The outside of your home needs to get just as much love as the interior. Unfortunately, not enough homeowners pay attention to this golden rule before an appraisal. While your appraiser will primarily focus on the inside, they will take signs of neglect on the exterior as symptoms of a general malaise.
This issue is genuine even in luxury home designs with excellent overall architectural looks. Simply put, if you don’t upgrade the look of your home or at least make it presentable, you’re going to get downgraded and experience some problems with its overall cost and value.
Thankfully, you can take many steps to minimize this problem’s overall impact on your appraisal. First, start out by taking all the steps outlined below. You can then move towards the inside of your home and start preparing it for the assessment. These steps should take minimal time to manage:
- Paint the Home Exterior – Have you upgraded the exterior of your home recently? Please don’t lie to us. Most people typically don’t paint or upgrade their home’s siding for years. As a result, you need to do some painting and enhance the overall look of your house’s exterior to keep it in great shape for some time.
- Enhance the Windows and Doors – Your doors and windows are kind of like the face of your home. They create a unique appearance and provide easy light and heat control. First, however, you must make sure to add new blinds and more efficient doors to ensure they are as strong as possible.
- Pay Attention to Your Roof – Is your roof in pretty rough shape? Have you neglected it for years and just noticed that it needs help? You might need to call roofing professionals right away. They can help with upgrades, repairs, replacement, and even steps like better AC install processes.
- Upgrade the Landscaping – Did you know that your lawn contributes almost as much to your curb appeal as the home? So brush it up a little! Cut your grass, contact a tree trimming service, and install comfortable and high-quality upgrades that make it more appealing.
- Provide Extra Pavement Protection for Your Home – Your driveway must remain strong to avoid cracks or other problems. Cracks might damage your vehicle or spread rampantly and cause many other issues. Thankfully, you can call contractors to handle this issue for you with ease.
- Other Steps You Must Take – Don’t forget to upgrade things like any of your decorations, your AC replacements, natural elements like rocks and stones, and any other factors that make your home’s exterior appearance unique. Doing so helps to minimize issues with your appraisal.
As you can see, it is critical to follow all of these steps to enhance your home in many ways. When you focus on the curb appeal, you can provide an exterior that will appeal to your appraiser. Then, you can move on to more interior designs and use your ideas on the exterior to help you out.
Before getting into any major upgrades (like new bedroom furniture), you must make sure to upgrade your essential utility elements. So let’s take a look at that next to get an idea of how you can prepare your home and make it more appealing to potential buyers and your appraiser at the same time.
Enhance Your Utilities
Don’t think that your appraiser will just look at the appearance of your home and call it a day. Instead, their inspection goes into the house and gauges things like its overall efficiency and design excellence. Some of the first things that they’ll check will be your utilities and their general layout.
What elements should you upgrade to get the best results? Consider the options below and fit them into your overall renovation schedule. Each will likely require you to work with a professional team of experts who fully understands what you’re attempting to do here:
- Upgrade Your Electrical System – Call an electrician and upgrade your entire electrical system as needed. Put in new wiring, stronger lighting fixtures, better plugs, and much more. Though costly, these steps will ensure that your home is as appealing and attractive as possible for your needs.
- Enhance Your Water System – Is your plumbing in pretty rough shape, and you’re worried about the appraisal? Call a plumber to get help. They can provide you with many high-quality upgrades and ensure that your home is as attractive as possible for your needs.
- Improve Your Bathroom – Your bathroom needs things like bath refinishing to look and feel great for your appraiser. Refinishing adds a little shine to everything that makes a bathroom appealing. Your appraiser will definitely notice the difference if you take this small but effective step.
- Install New Flooring – Great floors do their job in almost sheer invisibility. You never notice your floor unless it’s dirty or in rough shape. So, make sure you upgrade them right away! Talk to flooring stores that can help you install new floors that feel right for your needs as a homeowner.
- Put In New Fixtures for your Home – Don’t neglect to add new things like luxury bath fixtures in your bathroom. These help to make it more appealing and give your home a brand new style. Pay attention to how these fixtures work with the rest of your home to ensure you get the best overall results.
- Clean All Your Windows – When you clean your windows, you perform a few steps for the price of one. First, you make your house more appealing and presentable. Second, you help enhance your HVAC bills. In this way, you can save money and impress your appraisal professional.
Talk to your appraiser before they come to see what kind of things they plan on checking while they visit. Often, they can give you a list of elements that they want to see addressed. However, you might also find that your appraiser doesn’t want to share that information with you to avoid affecting you.
In that case, just follow the steps above to get a great-looking home in no time. Your appraiser will not only grade your house on its appearance but the value of its interior design elements. If they see appealing and efficient utility items, they will give your home a better overall value.
Upgrade Your Interior
We can’t emphasize enough the importance of making your interior attractive. However, you also need to address any common issues that may develop in a home without warning. Just a few steps that you can take to improve this overall experience include things like:
- Repair All Other Problems – You took care of your utilities in the last section and probably did a great job at it too. Did you make sure to fix minor imperfections in your home, though? Of course, we’re talking about things like obvious signs of mold, leaks, scuffs on your floor or walls, and more? If not, you should take the time to repair these problems to get your home looking incredible and attractive again.
- Declutter the Interior – Get rid of any useless clutter that’s hanging around in your home. Remove things lying around or getting in the way and either store or throw them away. Make a choice on what you want to keep and what items you don’t need. Pro tip: a majority of the clutter you likely find in your house can be thrown away. Do you really have to have that Disney World receipt from three years ago?
- Update Your Furniture – When was the last time you put new furniture in your home? Don’t answer that question. Most people probably haven’t in 10 or 20 years. However, if you have recently, you can skip ahead and pat yourself on the back! If not, you should put in some new and comfortable furniture. Doing so helps to impress the appraiser and makes a home more attractive.
- Decorate the House More Appealingly – Your house probably has a comfortable “lived-in” feel that makes you feel very happy. However, your appraiser is going to see that look and immediately downgrade your home. So try to decorate the house more neutrally, taking out incredibly personal items and putting up general artwork and other attractive things that don’t feel too personal to you.
Follow these steps, and you’ll make your interior more appealing and attractive. You may also want to consider many of these steps for your outside, as well. For example, cut away weeds, put away unnecessary decorations or ugly furniture, and add more up-to-date and attractive decorative elements instead.
Collect Information You’ll Need
The steps above can be considered the fun part of your appraisal prep. From now on, you’re mostly collecting and presenting paperwork and data to your appraiser. While not much of a joy to do, it does help make their job easier and improves your experience. Make sure to present data on:
- Ownership Paperwork and Insurance – Collect all paperwork regarding your house and your ownership, including the deed, your insurance documents, and much more. Your appraiser doesn’t need them to verify ownership. However, they do help to make it easier to understand your house.
- Any Improvements You’ve Done – Include paperwork that describes all of the upgrades you’ve done for your home. These should include not just a listing of what they are but how much you spent and how long ago you put them in. Receipts, invoices, and zoning permit all help with this process.
- All of Your Comps – Comparables or comps help to make your home easier to compare to others. These include things like bathrooms, bedrooms, and overall square footage. Please provide this information to your appraiser to make it easier for them to come to a decision on your home’s value.
- Known Problems – Are there any issues with your home that your appraiser should know? Don’t think you can hide prominent or visible things. You can’t legally hide them, anyway, or you might get sued if you sell a home with them. Instead, list them out for your appraiser to make them easier to find.
- Past Disasters – Did your home experience a flood, fire, lightning strikes, or any other significant problems? If so, you need to list them out for your appraiser. Discuss how you handled them, showcase the repair and renovation steps taken, and work directly with them to ensure they understand this process thoroughly.
Your appraiser may or may not ask for this information from you. However, trust is when we say that they’ll appreciate the steps that you took. Otherwise, they will have to research these facts themselves and dig them up. Any cut work from their schedule is something they’ll greatly appreciate.
Your appraisal doesn’t have to go poorly if you take these steps to heart! Homeowners around the nation prepare their homes for appraisal in this way and give themselves the best chance of thriving. First, however, you need to make sure you have the money, time, and energy to handle all these steps. Then, if you can handle any DIY steps, take them to cut back on some installation or repair costs. If not, you should contact a repair crew for each job and direct them to provide the attractive home you want and deserve.