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How to Make a Refinance Appraisal Checklist

May 4, 2020 By MelissaB Leave a Comment

If you’re looking to refinance your home, you will likely need to have an appraisal as it’s the first step to putting an official price value on your home.  You may not know where to start, but learning how to make a refinance appraisal checklist is the perfect place.  Once you do this, you can work on improving your property for the appraisal.

How to Make a Refinance Appraisal Checklist

How to Make a Refinance Appraisal Checklist

My husband and I recently called our real estate agent because we wanted to refinance our house.  She gave us several pieces of advice to prepare for an appraisal.

Get Rid of the Clutter

How to Make a Refinance Appraisal Checklist
Photo by Minh Pham on Unsplash

Most Americans have at least some clutter.  Your job is to get rid of the clutter in preparation for the appraisal, much the same way you would if you were preparing your home for sale.  Our real estate agent specifically said, “Make your house show ready.”  However, she also added that in general we didn’t have to make places like closets pristine for an appraisal.

Make a List of Improvements to the Home

Since you’ve lived in your home, what improvements have you made?  Make sure you have a list of what you’ve done and when you did it.  Since we moved in, we’ve replaced the water heater, the HVAC, and two bedrooms’ flooring.  Big ticket items like replacing the HVAC system help the appraiser increase the value of your home.

Make Easy Cosmetic Fixes

When you’re in your house every day, you tend not to notice the little things like the paint that is chipped off your kitchen cabinets or the hole in the dry wall where your child’s bedroom door handle hit the wall.  You might not notice dingy floorboards or dusty door hinges, but the appraiser will.

These items don’t cost much to fix, but they can increase the value of your home by creating the appearance that you care for your home and that it is well-maintained.

Look at the Curb Appeal

How to Make a Refinance Appraisal Checklist
Photo by Matt Chen on Unsplash

How does your house look on the outside?  Is the paint fresh or the siding clean?  Is the lawn mowed?  Nicely landscaped?  Or, do you have piles of clutter outside?

A tree fell in our backyard during a windstorm, and while we had taken care of most of it, the trunk of it still lay across our backyard.  The real estate agent was adamant that we must take care of that before the appraiser came.

Get Comps for the Neighborhood

How much do comparable houses in your neighborhood sell for?  Having this information gives you an idea of how much your house would likely sell for.  Making this information easily accessible to the appraiser also gives him a starting point.

Our real estate agent offered to put together a list of comps for us.  However, we didn’t need her to.  When we put in our application for refinance, the comps in our area were high enough and our mortgage low enough, that the bank didn’t even require an appraisal.

Final Thoughts

Now is a good time to consider a refinance based on the market.  If you’re wondering how to get started, hopefully this helps you learn how to make a refinance appraisal checklist.

MelissaB
MelissaB

Melissa is a writer and virtual assistant. She earned her Master’s from Southern Illinois University, and her Bachelor’s in English from the University of Michigan. When she’s not working, you can find her homeschooling her kids, reading a good book, or cooking. She resides in New York, where she loves the natural beauty of the area.

www.momsplans.com/

Filed Under: Home, loans Tagged With: Home, mortgage refinance

Mortgage Refinance Underway

September 1, 2010 By Shane Ede 5 Comments

A few weeks ago, I asked all of your advice on whether we should refinance our mortgage.  At the time, we had just begun thinking about it and were still working out the numbers.  As you can probably guess from the title of this article, we went ahead and did it.

So, here’s why.  Part of our hesitation was that we plan on being out of our house in less than two years and it would take about two and a half to earn the closing costs back with the saved interest.  I think Financial Samurai hit the nail on the head in the comments of that original post when he asked what % we were sure that we would be moving in the next two years.  And the truth of the matter is that we hadn’t planned on living in the house longer than 4 or 5 years and here we are going on 6 years.  So, yes we plan on moving, but there is a chance that we will end up not moving.  More importantly, I think we can earn back those closing costs a lot quicker by using the saved interest money to pay down other, higher interest, debt.  If we’re paying off debt at 14%, we’re saving quite a bit each month and that will add up fast.

We did a little bit better on the interest than I had thought.  Originally, I had estimated that we’d get about 4.375%, but we actually got in at 4.25%.  Every little bit helps.  Of course, the downside is that will end up paying a bit more than I had anticipated in closing costs.  Which isn’t great, but overall, the math is still very favorable to us.  We also reduced our monthly mortgage payment by about $130 or so.  That’s a pretty good chunk of change that can go towards our other, higher interest, debt.  We’ve got a few more pieces of paperwork to turn in and an official assessment to get before we can truly seal the deal, but all of that shouldn’t have any effect on the turnout.  I’m hoping that we can have it all finished up and we can be paying the lower mortgage payment sometime around October or November.

What about you guys?  Any of you taking advantage of the low rates to refinance your mortgages?

Shane Ede

I started this blog to share what I know and what I was learning about personal finance. Along the way I’ve met and found many blogging friends. Please feel free to connect with me on the Beating Broke accounts: Twitter and Facebook.

You can also connect with me personally at Novelnaut, Thatedeguy, Shane Ede, and my personal Twitter.

www.beatingbroke.com

Filed Under: Home, loans Tagged With: mortgage, mortgage loan, mortgage refinance, refi, refinance

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