Condominium & PUD
A unit is valued with the building around it. Floor, line, monthly charge and the association's finances move a number further than the floor plan does.
- Typical fee
- Quoted on request
- Turnaround
- 3–6 business days
Assignments
What kind of appraisal do you need?
Each of these carries its own effective date, answers to a different reader, and has its own idea of what makes a report stand up. So the purpose is where every one of them starts.
20 assignment types, in three groups. If you are not sure which describes your situation, that is the most common question I get and it takes about a minute to settle on the phone.
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.
Employee relocation
A different question from every other page on this site: not what the house is worth today, but what it should sell for inside a defined marketing period.
- Typical fee
- Quoted individually
- Turnaround
- 5–8 business days
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.
- Typical fee
- Quoted on request
- Turnaround
- 3–5 business days
New construction
Valued from plans, as though the work described were already done — which is a hypothetical condition, and it has to be labelled as one.
- Typical fee
- Quoted individually
- Turnaround
- 5–10 business days
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.
- Typical fee
- Quoted on request
- Turnaround
- 3–5 business days
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.
- Typical fee
- Quoted on request
- Turnaround
- 3–5 business days
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.
- Typical fee
- Quoted on request
- Turnaround
- 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.
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.
- Typical fee
- Quoted on request
- Turnaround
- 5–7 business days
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.
- Typical fee
- Quoted on request
- Turnaround
- 5–7 business days
Gift & charitable donation
Dated to the day of the transfer, and written to a federal standard that has specific requirements about who may sign it and what it must contain.
- Typical fee
- Quoted on request
- Turnaround
- 5–10 business days
Insurance & casualty loss
Two jobs people ask for and confuse: what the property was worth the day before the loss, and what it would cost to rebuild. They are different numbers.
- Typical fee
- Quoted on request
- Turnaround
- 7–14 business days
Litigation support
Written on the assumption that an opposing expert is being paid to find the weakest adjustment in it.
- Typical fee
- Quoted individually
- Turnaround
- 7–14 business days
REO & foreclosure
Usually two numbers rather than one: what the property is worth as it stands, and what it would be worth repaired. The gap is the decision.
- Typical fee
- Quoted individually
- Turnaround
- 5–10 business days
Retrospective valuation
A value for a day that has already gone, built only from what the market knew at the time — and not from anything that has happened since.
- Typical fee
- Quoted on request
- Turnaround
- 5–10 business days
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.
- Typical fee
- Quoted on request
- Turnaround
- 5–10 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.
Apartment buildings
At five units the property stops being residential in valuation terms. Different form, different approach, different lender, different appraiser credential.
- Typical fee
- Quoted individually
- Turnaround
- 10–20 business days
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.
- Typical fee
- Quoted individually
- Turnaround
- 10–20 business days
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.
- Typical fee
- Quoted individually
- Turnaround
- 10–18 business days
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.
- Typical fee
- Quoted individually
- Turnaround
- 7–12 business days
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.
- Typical fee
- Quoted individually
- Turnaround
- 7–15 business days
A quoted fee is for a single-family residence and is confirmed in writing before anything starts. Income property, commercial work, relocation assignments and litigation support are each priced on their own facts, because they vary far too much to sit under one figure.
Commercial, mixed-use and five-plus-unit assignments are handled under the credential New Jersey requires for them. Describe the property on the call and you will get a straight answer about scope before anything is engaged.
Next step
Not sure which one applies?
Describe the situation and the deadline on a call. It takes about a minute. Where an appraisal is the wrong tool, or where something free would answer you just as well, that is what you will hear.