What to expect
What actually happens, start to finish
Five stages. The one that takes longest is the one nobody watches.
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01
10 minutes
The call
Purpose comes first, because it settles the effective date and everything that follows from it. Where a comparative market analysis would serve you better than an appraisal, this is where you find that out — not after you have paid for the wrong one.
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02
Same day
Fee and scope, in writing
Sent before anything is booked. The engagement names the intended use, who is entitled to rely on the report, the effective date and the fee. Nothing in that fee turns on the value reached.
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03
45–90 minutes
The inspection
Every room, utility spaces and wherever the mechanicals live included. Exterior, lot, outbuildings. Measurements taken from outside. You need not be there for the whole of it, but somebody has to let us in.
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04
Several days
Research and analysis
Sales pulled to the effective date rather than to today, then adjustments built and supported. This is the bulk of the work, and you see none of it happen.
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05
On delivery
The report
Delivered digitally: the value conclusion, the sales it rests on, the adjustments explained, any extraordinary assumption disclosed, and a signed USPAP certification. It goes to whoever the engagement named.
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 or an accountant where you instruct us in writing. You get the figure in writing before the inspection is even booked.
Sitting outside that is work which genuinely scales — two-to-four family, acreage and multi-parcel holdings, and effective dates far enough back that the research lengthens materially. Those are quoted one at a time, in writing, before anything starts. How the fee is worked out.
What this is not
An appraisal is not a home inspection, and it is not a survey, an environmental assessment or a structural report. An appraiser records what is visible and is not qualified to say how bad a defect is or what putting it right would cost. If that is what you need, you need a different professional, and you should get one before you list.
Nor may an appraiser take a fee that depends on the value reached, agree a figure in advance, or act as both appraiser and agent on one property. None of those are house policy. They are the reason the report carries any weight with the person you need to convince.
Where the measurements come from
The building is measured on site and drawn to scale. Room dimensions and gross living area come out of that inspection rather than off the tax record — which runs years behind, and now and then has the footprint wrong altogether.
It matters most when the report is going to be read by somebody looking for a problem with it. A living area figure copied off an assessment card is the very first thing a careful reader on the other side checks.
FAQ
Questions people actually ask
Should I clean the house first?
Tidy helps a little, clutter costs you nothing, and honestly neither one shifts the number. Access is what shifts it. A room that cannot be entered has to be handled as an assumption instead of an observation, and assumptions make a report weaker. So unlock the basement, the attic, the garage and the utility room, and that is genuinely all the preparation required.
Should I walk round with the appraiser?
By all means, and plenty of people do. It is a sensible time to point out work that is not obvious from looking, and to ask whatever you want to ask. What walking round will not do is move the conclusion — and an appraiser who lets it ought to alarm you rather than put you at ease.
Can I tell you what I need the number to be?
You can say it, and it will change nothing. A fee or a conclusion tied to a predetermined result is prohibited under USPAP, and a report built that way is worth nothing to the person you needed to convince — which was the whole reason for commissioning it. What does help is telling us what the number has to survive: a PMI threshold, a filing, an opposing expert going through it line by line. That shapes the scope and the depth of support. It does not shape the answer.
What happens if it comes in low?
Then it comes in low, and what you have is a real number rather than a comfortable one. If you think a particular comparable or a particular adjustment is wrong, say which and say why — that is a conversation about the analysis, and it is entirely legitimate. Disagreeing with the bottom line while agreeing with every step that produced it is not the same conversation.
Who else sees it?
Whoever the engagement letter names, and nobody else. Ordinarily that means you, plus counsel, an accountant or a servicer where you have instructed us in writing. An appraiser may not hand the report to a third party who was never identified as an intended user. That is a confidentiality obligation, not an administrative obstacle, and it protects you rather than us.
Does an appraisal expire?
The report states a value as of a particular date and that never stops being true, so strictly it does not expire. Its usefulness does. A current-value report goes stale as the market moves, and anyone relying on one — servicers and lenders especially — will have their own view about how recent it has to be. A retrospective report written to a fixed date, a date of death for instance, does not decay in the same way, because the date it answers cannot move.
Terms explained in plain English in the glossary.
Next step
Two minutes on the phone settles most of this
Say what the number is for and when you need it. That is enough to fix the effective date, the fee and the turnaround on the call. And if an appraisal is the wrong instrument for your situation, or a cheaper one would do the job, you will be told so before anything is ordered.