Sell
Inspections & Appraisals
Author: Ryan | September 5, 2017
Inspection day can be exciting, scary, and informative. It means the sales process is moving along, but inspections and appraisals can also be speedbumps on your road to closing.
Inspections and appraisals can both take some scheduling and turn-around time depending on how active the market is.
Inspections
The buyer's lender or agent will often recommend an inspector. Your property should be showing ready since the buyer will likely be following along with the inspector throughout the inspection. All areas should be accessible for inspection including attics, basements, crawlspaces, plumbing, and electrical panels. Inspections typically take 2-4 hours and the seller should not be present.
There may be some items on the inspection report the buyer's lender requires to be corrected. There may also be items the buyer asks to be corrected. Although the seller typically pays for the corrections there may be circumstances where the cost is shared between the buyer and seller, the buyer raises or lowers their offer price, or the seller simply declines to make the correction. The Purchase Agreement may include additional information or direction on how to handle inspection results.
Appraisals
The buyer's lender will often select the appraiser. Since the buyer typically pays for the appraisal the seller often does not find out the appraised value, as long as the value was at or above the buyer's mortgage amount. In the event it appraises for less than the mortgage amount the buyer may lower their offer to meet the mortgage amount or make a larger downpayment to cover the difference.
If our client's appraisal appears to come in unfairly low we recommend they contact us right away.
Our Service Provider page includes licensed inspectors and appraisers as well other contractors that can asisst with remedying inspection items.