In today’s market, you need to be able to sell your home to both the buyer and the appraiser.
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Looking to sell in Southwest Ohio? Get a Free Home Price Evaluation
If you’re selling your home in today’s market, why do you need to sell it twice? Shouldn’t once be enough?
We wish that were still true, but there is a big hurdle we’re experiencing over and over again. We’ve sold nearly 300 homes so far in 2017, and agents doing a smaller volume of business might not notice this trend. Allow me to explain.
We’re in a market with a limited inventory of homes available in many areas, yet there is strong demand for homes in those same areas. This equates to escalating values. When prices surge like this, appraisers have difficulty defending a sale price with comparable homes that have sold in the last six months. Remember—since some of those homes have sold, the market has already risen, but appraisers are trying to find a similar transactions to support the sale price of your home. They aren’t trying to be difficult, but they are being careful since their industry is regulated by the government.
Since appraisers are in this dilemma, many buyers and sellers are experiencing the pain of a short appraisal. This is when the appraisal comes in lower than the contract-to-purchase price. In situations like that, the buyer can’t get a loan to buy the home for the agreed-upon purchase price.
Your home must be sold twice—once to the buyer and once to the appraiser.
In many of these cases, it requires the seller to lower the price just to hold the deal together. As you can imagine, the buyer doesn’t want to pay more than the appraised value for the home. Who would? This also usually requires the buyer to bring additional funds to the closing table, which they usually don’t have.
Now you see why your home has to be sold twice—once to the buyer and once to the appraiser. Sometimes the second sale is the most difficult. I’ve talked before about the value of having an appraisal done before the home goes on the market. At the very least, this requires skillful guidance from real estate experts who’ve handled hundreds of transactions. We know the potential pitfalls of the present market, and our job is to steer you clear of them so you can have a smooth transaction and a successful sale to the appraiser.
If you have any questions about selling in our current market, don’t hesitate to give us a call. We’re here to get your home sold, and if we don’t, we’ll buy it at a price we agreed to up front. We look forward to hearing from you.
