A forecast, not a snapshot
Every other assignment on this site answers the same underlying question: what is this property worth, as of a stated date. A relocation appraisal asks something else.
It asks what the house should sell for inside a defined marketing period — sixty days, ninety, a hundred and twenty, whatever the relocation company’s instructions specify. That is a forecast. A disciplined one, built from evidence rather than instinct, but a forecast nonetheless, and the discipline of producing it is genuinely different from the discipline of producing an opinion of current market value.
Two practical consequences follow, and they are the reason the ERC form exists rather than the lending forms.
Current listings matter as much as closed sales. A closed sale tells you what somebody paid three months ago. A house presently on the market four streets away is what your house will be competing against next week, and a forecast that ignores the competition is not a forecast.
The marketing period is an input, not a footnote. The same house given 120 days and 60 days does not produce the same answer, and in New Jersey the calendar compounds it — a period running from March and a period running from October are materially different assignments. Which one applies has to be settled before the work starts.
Check whether you should be commissioning this at all
If your employer has engaged a relocation company, they will in all likelihood order the appraisals themselves, from their own approved panel, and they will not accept one you commissioned.
Ask them first. If the answer is that they are ordering, then paying me achieves nothing toward the move, and I would rather say so than take the fee. There are legitimate reasons to want your own independent read on the number — you may simply not trust the process — but be clear that is what you are buying.
If what you actually want is to know what the house is worth, an ordinary pre-listing appraisal answers that question better and costs less.
Why there are usually two
Relocation companies commonly commission two independent appraisals and reconcile the results.
The two appraisers do not speak to each other, and should not. Comparing notes would collapse two independent opinions into one and destroy the only reason for buying two. If you find that the numbers differ, that is the process working rather than failing — the reconciliation is exactly what the second one was for.
Where this work comes from here
Mostly the corporate corridor running through Essex and Morris: Millburn, Short Hills, Livingston, Florham Park, Madison, Chatham and Parsippany, along with the pharmaceutical and financial employers around them.
It is a specific kind of housing stock and a specific kind of buyer, and the marketing-period question bites hardest at the top of it. A well-priced four-bedroom in Livingston will trade inside ninety days most of the year. A larger and more particular house in the same town may not, and the report has to say which of those it is looking at.
What you receive
A completed ERC summary appraisal report in the form your relocation company requires, stating an anticipated sales price for the marketing period they specified, supported by both competing listings and closed sales, with marketing strategy and marketability-relevant repairs addressed, and a signed USPAP certification.
Send me their instructions before asking for a fee. Their requirements differ from one company to the next and they change what the assignment involves.
New Jersey specifics
- The corporate corridor through Essex and Morris — Millburn, Short Hills, Livingston, Florham Park, Madison, Chatham, Parsippany — generates most of this work in the service area, alongside the pharmaceutical and financial employers around it.
- Relocation companies typically commission two independent appraisals and reconcile them. The two appraisers do not confer, and should not.
- New Jersey's spring market is pronounced enough that a 120-day marketing period beginning in October and one beginning in March are materially different assignments on the same house.
What you receive
- A completed ERC summary appraisal report in the form the relocation company requires
- An anticipated sales price stated for a defined marketing period
- Analysis of competing current listings, not only closed sales
- A statement of the marketing strategy and any recommended repairs bearing on marketability
- Signed USPAP certification
What I need from you
- The relocation company's instructions and their required marketing period
- Interior access, usually at short notice
- Improvement documentation and permits
- Any listing history, including a listing that expired unsold