We get asked quite a bit, what happens if your property does not appraise at value? We recently sold a home for a dear friend of ours in La Mesa and that is exactly what happened. Here's the story... This home is a unique property in the area for a couple reasons. First, it has been beautifully refinished to an updated mid-century modern style. Second, the location and size of lot were unique compared to homes in the area. We anticipated that we would need to draw as much attention to the property as possible and we may potentially have an issue with appraising at value due to the uniqueness of this property.
When looking at comparable properties, we knew we needed to be very strategic in our pricing. Our goal was to sell for around $660,000 and decided to place it on the market for $649,900 to bring as much attention as possible to this home. We had 75 showings and 13 offers which drove our selling price up to $700,000! Now to get through the appraisal...
The appraisal came in at $650,000. That's $50,000 LOWER than our selling price! So what do we do? There are three options when an appraisal misses: 1. Lower the selling price to the appraised value 2. The buyer must increase their down payment to come up with the variance in value or 3. Negotiate some middle ground between the two. Due to the number of offers we had, we had LEVERAGE. The buyer knew we had backup offers and they wanted the property. So after various conversations, the buyer came up with the difference by increasing their down payment and bought the property as is!
Every home is unique and brings with it new strategies to sell for the highest price in the least amount of time. The Seaman Team is here to help you through every step of the process.
Give us a call if you have questions! 619-871-3141
Posted by Brad Seaman on
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