Top 10 Ways to Avoid Low Appraisals

3. Communicate with the appraiser

With the implementation of the HVCC, it was widely reported in the lending and real estate communities that builders and real estate agents could no longer communicate with appraisers. This is patently untrue, Gardiner says.

Builders can, and should, provide appraisers with:

• market and absorption information,
• sales information for the community,
• specifications for the property,
• energy-efficiency features of the house,
• details on what materials were selected and why, and
• buyer response to the material selections.

You can even tell the appraiser the sale price of the house, Gardiner says. “There’s nothing restricting a builder from showing the appraiser the sales price,” he says. “The appraiser is the only one who has to remain unbiased. Don’t be shy. The appraiser is going to find out anyway.”

Finding out that he could talk to appraisers was great news to Marty Mitchell, vice CEO of Rockville, Md.-based Mitchell & Best Homebuilders. He makes a point of giving all the pertinent information to the appraiser in advance, instead of waiting until there’s a problem to present valuable data.

“To sit back and say, ‘I’ve got all this information’ and spring it on the appraiser after a bad report doesn’t help at all,” Mitchell says. “If I were the appraiser, I’d be mad about that. Give it to them up front.”

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