What do house appraisers look for?

[Shalom]

I've been bombarded recently with ads from various mortgage providers, offering unrealistically-low rates, many of which skirt the edge of almost-fraud by looking very official and US-Government-esque. One of these even had "2013" with the "20" dark-on-light like the tax forms have. (Of course they all say "This is not a government document" in tiny print somewhere on the back of the form.) And the radio ads piss me off even more. "You may be able to refinance even if you're under water! And even if your rate is over 5%, you may be eligible for a reduction!" etc. Notice my emphasis. But that's a rant for another time.

In any case, due to the balance due being higher than the house could be sold for, the only bank who'd touch my mortgage is of course the one who currently holds it, which is UrbynBank. (I'm sure you can guess who. And if there's a real UrbynBank somewhere, my apologies to them.) My rate has been 5⅜, which was dynamite when I got it, but now, not so much; they're offering 3⅞, which is about as low as you can get on a 2-family house. Process has been relatively painless up to now, thank $DEITY. My cost is something like $665.00, most of which goes to the required home inspector, which they hire and send over.

So the guy was here today. He went and took one picture in every room, and was kinda evasive about why he (or rather UrbynBank) wanted them. The house is its usual messy self, which I've long since grown out of being embarrassed about, I know I'm incapable of keeping it any neater than it is, and back when I was single you literally could not see that my apartment had a floor, you had to deduce it from the fact that all my worldly possessions weren't falling into the basement, but I'd really rather not have the approval or refusal of my mortgage riding on that. He did say that they were looking to make sure the apartment was "livable", but that doesn't really tell me all that much. The physical plant is in decent shape, no holes in the walls/floors/ceilings, there aren't broken pipes or exposed wiring, no illegal apartments in the basement or attic (I've heard a horror story from a friend of my sister who moved here from Brooklyn and had to get evicted when an inspector found that she was living in an attic which the property owner, unbeknownst to her, had illegally converted to an apartment), and so forth. Also I haven't cut the grass in the backyard for a while, and it's about knee high, but he said that didn't matter.

So I'm asking for prior experience here. Anybody been in a position to have had their house inspected, or who have done so themselves, what are they typically looking for, and what could cause them to reject the loan? (Which considering that they're the ones currently holding it, would mean that they continue to get more money for the same services provided, so they really have no reason to knock my rate down at all when you come to think of it.)

[fma_fanatic]

They're looking for any updates/renovations that you might have done on the house, as well as the values of similar houses in the area.

So say you added a deck to your home or a pool. That might raise the value of the house. When we had an appraisal on our home, they did the same thing. Of course we startled the poor woman when she went to take a photo of the half bath in the basement. We kept a giant Kermit in there, left from a friend when she moved out a couple of houses ago.

Sadly we had to move him out of the way, but it was amusing to see her reaction - she took it well, I think.

[Seshat]

They're also looking for badly done or illegaly done renovations, unrepaired damage (eg evidence of unfixed roof leaks), and the like. Signs of rot or mould are also going to affect the value.

There's nothing you can do about a major part of the valuation; which is what similar places in similar neighbourhoods sell for. The part you can do something about: keep your house in good repair, or as best you can afford.

Imagine what your house would look like after your stuff is moved out and a professional cleaning company has been through. That's what the valuer is trying to imagine. The closer you can to making that a good mental image, the higher your valuation.

Of course, if you were actually trying to sell; I'd be suggesting you do surface renovations: hit the local secondhand building place, and buy matching sets of tap tops in good condition, and door handles, and so forth. Make use of paint. Scrub and repair grouting. Use grout whitener on the repaired grout. All of that.

You can still do this if you want to, but the inspector is used to looking past that to the actual condition of the place.

[LesserSouthernFroglet]

The last one I had done looked at size of the block, sale amounts in the area for equivalent properties, and size of the actual house. He took lots of pics around the place and used a laser measure for each room's dimensions. Multiple pix of bathroom and kitchen. He also checked out the new garage.

The house wasn't exceptionally tidy or anything, and I'm still partway through renovating, so some things were rather unfinished, so it's no show-home.

(NB his appraisal was exactly what I thought it should be)

[sstabeler]

yeah, i wouldn't worry about the house being untidy. They are looking for two things: 1) does it need work done before somebody could live in it? ( most mortgages cannot be takne out on a home that requires substantial work done to make ti livable, since the bank isn't interested in having to pay for major work following forclosure) 2) Any modificatins made- these could either increase or decrease your home's value.

[taxguykarl]

When we re-fi'ed a couple years ago, the appraiser was most interested the size of lot and room layout.