If you’re refinancing your home, chances are you will get an appraiser to take a look and assess your homes value. You could be doing this for a variety of reasons; selling your home, buying a home (this post won’t really apply to you), refinancing. Whatever the reason, you should be prepared for it and be sure you pump up your property value!
Consider These Things Before your appointment!
Get to cleaning, friend!
An appraiser is a person like anyone else. Yes, they are looking at your HOME and not your decor however, taking a hard look and maybe a good sniff or two of your space can have a huge impact on the appraisers evaluation. There’s a messy home and then there’s a dirty home. Your home could be organized and decluttered but if there’s Fluffy’s hairball in the corner, I’ll be giving you some looks. Check floors and vacuum and maybe mop if needed. Dust and clean the mirrors. You don’t need the intense white glove standard but clean as if your parents or even worse, the In-Laws are coming for a visit.
PLEASE check your bathtubs/showers and toilets. A gross toilet can number 1: make your bathroom smell gross and 2: make your bathroom look more aged than it really is.
When you walk into someone else’s house, you usually first notice the smell. It’s thought to be an indicator of how well you take care of your home. If you have pets, you probably need to do some things that can help like vacuum, using white vinegar or baking soda to neutralize smells. Clean the litter box…I mean literally take it out and clean it. Take a whiff of your couch. Mopping floors and giving rugs and carpets a good shampoo can really make a difference.
Declutter. Declutter. Declutter.
Again, they are looking at the home and not your $3,000 couch or your Crate and Barrel duvet cover with matching sham pillows. Put all your baby or pet toys away, no clothes all over the floor, wash your dishes and put them away! You get my drift.
To sum it up, just make sure you give a good cleaning before the appraiser comes and that’s one less worry!
Fresh paint job!
One thing a lot of homeowners look at when they are buying a house is the paint. MOST people don’t want to put in the time or work to paint over your lime green or baby blue bedroom from 2003. They want it ready to go! If your walls have dents and holes then you should definitely fill those with some spackling BEFORE you start painting. Sometimes wall corners can chip and show the metal edge, so make sure to fix that or you can paint over it cause honestly, I don’t think they’d notice. When you are picking your paint colors, go for some neutral colors. Colors that compliment the spaces. For example, using cooler toned colors in small spaces open up rooms more than warmer toned small rooms. Check Pinterest for some inspiration!
Baseboards & Crown molding!
When we bought the house in 2019, my co-worker at my then job told me clean baseboards can make a home look a lot newer and cleaner. She was so right! White baseboards and crown molding seem like small details but they really shouldn’t be overlooked.
We are actually looking to get our home refinanced in the next year so we just recently cleaned up our baseboards and crown molding by stripping some of the old ugly caulking off, resealing and filling the gaps between the boards and walls with a paintable caulk. Made a huge difference! Tip: Do this before you paint!
Upgrade Your Hardware
I’m talking door knobs, faucets, cabinet hardware, even light fixtures! It can give your kitchen and bathroom a real facelift. Personally, I am really over the silver hardware. Our house is a little more rustic in style so we go for the oil rubbed bronze. My parents helped move us into the house when we bought it. My mother, who is incredibly analytical and unafraid of charing criticism, was sour-faced about the kitchen hardware. Our cabinets weren’t in the best shape with chipping paint. The next time she came over, we ONLY changed out the cabinet knobs and the sink faucet and she noticed the difference without me pointing anything out. Win!
Bathroom & Kitchen Updates.
So we kind of touched on this before. Updated bathrooms and kitchens are top of mind when assessing value. Same with appliances. You can update things like lighting fixtures, cabinet hardware, faucets. I have a friend who painted her kitchen cabinets a nice teal/blue and they looked pretty dang good and really visually updated the space! Check out the tiling and grout. Gross dirt stained grout is a little off putting. Just the other day I cleaned the tiles and grout in our second floor bathroom and used a grout pen to recolor the grout to its original white and it looks a lot cleaner and newer! Another thing to consider is bathtubs and showers. Look at the seals, are they gross and black? Try cleaning/bleaching them. if that doesn’t work, I’d strip the cruddy old sealant and reseal. If your bathtub and tile are outdated you should think about getting them reglazed! Our tub is pretty old and we’ve looked into it. Luckily, it just needed an intense scrub and now it’s back to a pretty white. OR you can just replace it all but that’s a little pricey and sometimes unnecessary. The goal of the refinance is to SAVE and PROFIT so if you’re spending a bunch of money updating, it’s not going to really be worth the hassle.
Flooring
Okay, so along with cleaning your floors, you should look at how they’ve held up. We have wood flooring and it’s been scratched up by the previous owners pets and now ours. There is also some termite damage in the planks that they neglected to disclose. We are going to try and visually fix them with some wood filler and stain. Eventually we will refinish and stain them to look updated. If your floors look outdated and in bad shape, you should consider replacing them. If you’re tight on money, Luxury Vinyl Planks are something to consider!
Curb Appeal & Landscaping
This is a big one you’ll always hear about. How does the decking look? Maybe it needs a new coat of paint. The siding and patio of your house may also need a good power-wash which will do wonders, trust me. CUT YOUR GRASS please. No one wants to look out the window at the entrance to the Amazon Rainforest. Maybe you should do some gardening. If you have mulch then you should probably put new mulch down. Plant some perennials! I like perennial plants better – less work because they come back every year!
Look at the local competition
So you’ll want to get an idea or have a home price you want to try and hit? Do a search on a real estate site like Realtor.com or Zillow to see what homes similar to yours (number of beds and baths) look like? what are they going for? What trends have they followed? The appraiser is also taking a good look at the homes around you to get an idea of your home’s value. It’s also beneficial to look at your neighbors’ trends because there are some specific things people like based on location and it may increase value. An example would be Baltimore City. One thing we noticed and was always listed in descriptions was EXPOSED BRICK. People here love it and it does noticeably add value. Another is off-street parking. Parking pads are a luxury, my friend. If you have ever lived in a city with parallel parking and get home past 6 p.m. or you may be doomed to parking two or three blocks over.
Most of these things listed shouldn’t break the bank! Especially if you are shopping smart and do some DIY. Lyle and I had to become more handy as homeowners because, I’ll be honest, we aren’t rolling in the dough and mostly tend to avoid paying someone for projects we are fully capable of doing ourselves.
Hopefully we’ve given you some helpful tips to prepare for your home appraisal!
