Six counties in Northern New Jersey
One appraiser, from the inspection to the signature
Residential valuations for the situations where somebody other than you has to accept the number.
- 3–7 business days
- Quoted on request
- 6 counties
Rather just ask? (973) 427-8164
- Reports conform to USPAP
- The fee never depends on the value reached
- Proudly veteran-owned
Assignments
Start with the purpose
Each of these wants its own effective date and its own kind of support behind it. Settling which one you are in is what stops people paying for a report that was never capable of doing the job.
Not sure which of these you are? That is the most common question I get, it takes about a minute on the phone, and it costs nothing.
Mortgage & lending
Ordered by a lender, or taken before you approach one. The ordinary case, and the one where the deadline usually belongs to somebody else.
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Purchase & refinance
The ordinary case, and the one where the borrower has the least say. Worth knowing who actually controls the order before you go looking for an appraiser.
Quoted on request 3–5 business days
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PMI removal
An appraisal can end a monthly premium — but only on terms your servicer sets, and only if they will look at one you paid for.
Quoted on request 3–5 business days
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Home equity & HELOC
A second lien is decided on the equity above the first, which makes the valuation the whole argument — and makes what your lender accepts the first question.
Quoted on request 3–5 business days
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Pre-listing
Genuinely useful in a few situations and a waste of money in most. This page is mostly about telling which one you are in before you spend anything.
Quoted on request 3–5 business days
Legal, tax & life events
Where the number is read closely rather than filed, and where the effective date is nearly always something other than today.
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Estate & date-of-death
What the property was worth on the day the owner died — the number that sets the heirs' basis and supports the return the estate has to file.
Quoted on request 5–7 business days
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Divorce & equitable distribution
One impartial figure on the house, dated as counsel instructs, and set out so it holds up when somebody reads it hoping it is wrong.
Quoted on request 5–7 business days
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Tax assessment appeal
New Jersey does not reduce an assessment merely for being high. Work out whether you clear the statutory margin before you pay anybody, including me.
Quoted on request 5–10 business days
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Litigation support
Written on the assumption that an opposing expert is being paid to find the weakest adjustment in it.
Quoted individually 7–14 business days
Income & commercial property
Valued on what the property earns before anything else. Leases, rent rolls and operating statements do the work comparable sales do on a house.
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Two-to-four family
A small income property is not a large house. It gets valued twice — as a building and as an investment — and the two answers rarely agree on the first pass.
Quoted individually 7–12 business days
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Commercial property
A commercial building is bought for its income stream. Leases, the rent roll and the operating statements do the work that comparable sales do on a house.
Quoted individually 10–20 business days
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Mixed-use property
A shop below and apartments above are two different markets stacked on one lot, and the ratio between them decides how the building gets valued.
Quoted individually 10–18 business days
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Vacant land & development sites
Land is worth what can lawfully and physically be done with it. Highest and best use is not a formality here — it is most of the analysis.
Quoted individually 7–15 business days
That is 12 of 20. The rest — relocation, new construction, condominium, apartment buildings, REO, insurance loss, gift and donation, retrospective dates — are on the assignments page .
Every report is written on the assumption that somebody will go through it line by line.
Residential and small income-property work across six Northern New Jersey counties.
What you get that a form-filler will not give you
- One appraiser, start to finish
- The person who walks the property is the person who pulls the sales, writes the analysis and signs the certification. There is no coordinator between you and them, no file passed to a trainee, and no queue behind somebody else’s lender volume. If you want to ask why a particular sale was used, you can ask the man who used it.
- The effective date gets settled before anything starts
- A date of death. October 1 of the pretax year for an appeal. A date counsel has fixed. Most appraisals simply carry the day they were written and a good deal of this work cannot. A report cannot be repointed at a different date afterwards, so ordering the wrong one means paying twice — and that decision is usually made before an appraiser is involved at all.
- You will be told when not to order one
- A servicer that only accepts its own valuation. An assessment already inside the statutory margin. A house an agent could price for free. Each of those is a real reason not to take the job, and each of them is on this site in writing, because a practice that only tells you yes is telling you nothing.
The practice
Veteran-owned
Proudly veteran-owned, and independently run. There is no panel behind this practice, no management company routing the work, and nobody between you and the appraiser whose name goes on the certification.
That structure is the whole offer, and it cuts both ways honestly: a one-man practice cannot absorb ten rush assignments in a week, and I would rather tell you the date I can actually inspect than take the job and miss it. What it can do is give you the same person on the phone, at the property, and on the report — which is the part that matters when somebody later asks why a particular sale was used.
Public record
What the record already says about a property
Block and lot, property class, the assessment on file and the last recorded sale — straight from the State's own files, for any address in New Jersey.
It is somewhere to start rather than an answer. An assessment is struck for taxation. It sits at a ratio to market value that shifts by municipality and by year, and it trails the market rather than tracking it. What separates that figure from what the property would actually fetch is precisely what an appraisal is engaged to measure.
Rather just ask? (973) 427-8164
Not sure which you need?
The record, an agent's opinion, and an appraisal are three different answers
Three documents, three prices, and three entirely different purposes. Describe your situation on the call and you will hear which of the three serves you, including the times when the answer is the one that costs nothing.
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An appraisal
An independent opinion of value developed under USPAP and built to be examined. The document a lender, a county board, a court or the IRS will actually act on.
What I appraise → -
A comparative market analysis
Quicker and cheaper, for deciding what to list at. It is an agent’s pricing opinion rather than an appraisal, it is usually free, and it is not accepted for lending, tax or legal purposes.
When a CMA is enough → -
The public record you already have
The assessment above is free and it is on the screen. It is not market value and it never was — but for a rough sense of a property, it may be all you actually needed.
How the three differ →
Two of those three are free. If what you need is a list price on an ordinary house, or a rough sense of what a property is worth, an appraisal is the expensive way to get it and you should hear that before you order one. Call and say what it is for. (973) 427-8164
Next step
Tell me the purpose and the deadline
If an appraisal is the wrong instrument for what you need, or something cheaper would do the job, you will hear that on the call rather than after the invoice.