What to expect
What actually happens, start to finish
Five stages, real timings, and the one that takes longest is the one you never see.
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01
10 minutes
The call
What the number has to do, before anything else, because that decides the effective date and everything downstream of it. This is also where you find out if you should not be commissioning an appraisal at all — which happens often enough to be worth a call before it is worth a payment.
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02
Same day
Fee and scope, in writing
Before an inspection date is held. The letter names the intended use, who is entitled to rely on the report, the effective date and the fee. None of that fee moves with the value reached, and the figure quoted is the figure invoiced.
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03
45–90 minutes
The inspection
Every room, plus the basement, the attic and wherever the mechanicals sit. Exterior, lot and outbuildings. The building is measured from outside. On a two-to-four family that means every unit, tenanted ones included, which is the part worth arranging in advance.
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04
Several days
Research and analysis
Sales pulled to the effective date rather than to today, then each adjustment built and supported from the evidence. This is most of the work and the part nobody watches, which is why it is also the part that varies most between one appraiser and another.
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05
On delivery
The report
Delivered digitally: the conclusion, the sales it rests on, every adjustment explained, any extraordinary assumption disclosed on the face of it, and a signed USPAP certification. It goes to whoever the engagement letter named and to nobody else.
What the fee buys
On a single-family house: the inspection and measurement, the research and comparable analysis, the written report, and delivery onward to counsel, an accountant or a servicer where you instruct me in writing. The figure is in your hands before an inspection date is held.
Outside that sits work that genuinely scales — a two-to-four family needing an income analysis and access to every unit, a relocation report on the ERC form, litigation support, or an effective date far enough back that the research lengthens materially. Each is quoted on its own, in writing, before anything starts. How the fee is worked out.
What this is not
An appraisal is not a home inspection. It is also not a survey, an environmental assessment, a structural report or a termite certificate. I record what is visible and I am not qualified to tell you how serious a crack is or what putting it right would cost. Where that is the question you actually have, you need a different professional and you need them before you commit to anything.
Nor may an appraiser take a fee that turns on the value reached, agree a figure in advance, or hold an interest in the property being valued. None of that is house policy or restraint. It is the only reason the report carries weight with the person you needed to convince, and an appraiser willing to set any of it aside for you has just told you what their reports are worth.
Where the measurements come from
The building is measured on site and sketched to scale. Room dimensions and gross living area come out of that measurement rather than off the tax record, which trails the property by years and occasionally has the footprint wrong outright.
It matters most where the report will be read by somebody hoping to find a fault in it. A gross living area copied off an assessment card is the first thing a careful reader on the other side tests, and it is the cheapest way to lose an argument you were otherwise winning.
FAQ
Questions people actually ask
Should I clean the house first?
No. Clutter costs you nothing and a spotless house gains you nothing — market value is an opinion about the real property, not about housekeeping. Access is the only thing that genuinely matters. A room I cannot enter becomes an assumption rather than an observation, and every assumption makes the report weaker for you. Unlock the basement, the attic, the garage and the utility room. That is the whole of the preparation.
Should I walk round with the appraiser?
If you like, and plenty of people do. It is a good moment to point out work that is not obvious from looking at it — a rebuilt foundation, a replaced service, a permit that exists for something that looks unpermitted. Ask whatever you want while I am there. What the walk-round will not do is move the conclusion, and an appraiser who let it should worry you rather than reassure you.
Can I tell you what I need the number to be?
You can say it and nothing will happen. A fee or a conclusion tied to a predetermined result is prohibited outright, and beyond the prohibition it would defeat the purchase: a number that bends for you bends for the other side too, which makes it worthless to whoever you needed to convince. What genuinely helps is telling me what the figure has to survive — a servicer threshold, a filing deadline, a county board, an opposing expert going through it line by line. That changes the scope and the depth of support in the file. It does not change the answer.
What happens if it comes in low?
Then it comes in low and you have a real number rather than a comfortable one, which is worth more than it feels like at the time. If you believe a specific comparable or a specific adjustment is wrong, tell me which one and why — that is a legitimate conversation and appraisers do miss things, a permitted addition that never reached the public record being the classic case. Disagreeing with the total while accepting every step that produced it is a different conversation and it does not go anywhere.
Who else sees it?
Whoever the engagement letter names, and nobody else at all. Usually that is you, plus counsel, an accountant or a servicer where you have said so in writing. I may not hand the report to somebody who was never named as an intended user, however reasonable their request sounds — including a family member, an agent, or the other side. That is a confidentiality obligation under USPAP rather than an administrative obstacle, and the person it protects is you.
Does an appraisal expire?
Not strictly. The report states a value as of a particular date and that stays true forever. What expires is its usefulness to somebody else: a current-value report ages as the market moves, and whoever you are giving it to — a servicer or a lender especially — will have their own rule about how recent it has to be, so ask them rather than me. A report written to a fixed date in the past, a date of death for instance, does not decay that way at all, because the date it answers cannot move.
Plain-English definitions for all of it sit in the glossary.
Next step
Two minutes on the phone settles most of this
Tell me what the number has to do and the date you are working to. Those two fix the effective date, the fee and the turnaround on the call — and where an appraisal is the wrong tool, or a free one would answer you just as well, that is what you will hear before anything is ordered.