Kevin Brunnock | NYC Real Estate Professional

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December 8, 2020

Tips for New York Home Appraisal

If you are looking to buy a new home or just refinance your current mortgage, your lender will want to schedule an appraisal. This objective assessment helps to determine what your home is worth. Something that ranks high to all lenders is the consideration of collateral on their loan. Whether you are buying or selling, it will help you get a feel for how appraisals work. Here’s how you can prepare for your NYC home appraisal. 

What’s Involved? 

So what should you expect if you have someone come to your home to appraise it? An appraiser’s job is very similar to a home inspector’s position, with some tiny differences. Items that range from big to small will be taken into account by your appraiser, so that geometric mural that you did during the lockdown may need to go. 

Things That Go Into a Home Appraisal

While your potential buyer may love your place and decide that they are ok with your asking price, all lenders will require you to have your home appraised to determine its value. To help them arrive at an estimate, they will look at the following:

  • Your home’s exterior: The appraiser will look at just about every part of the construction of your home. From the roof to the foundation, walls, and flooring, these will all be the potential cause for the house’s value to decrease if the appraiser finds something wrong.
  • Size: A big part of determining the home’s value is the slot’s size and square foot of the lot. The more rooms and bathrooms that a house has can help to raise the value of the home. Knowing the floor area or FAR of the property will tell you if space has room for extensions, which can be another factor in the value. 
  • Condition: Just like your exterior, the appraiser will go over the inside of your home with a fine-tooth comb. The flooring, kitchen, plumbing, electrical, and lighting are all components that your appraiser will be assessing.
  • Improvements: Your appraiser can also help you determine what might need to be updated to increase your home’s value. Renovating a bathroom or adding an HVAC system can add years of life to the property, which helps increase the value. 

Who Receives the Appraisal Information?

The final verdict will be gathered by your appraiser and at the disposal of who ordered it; this is usually the lender. It is then up to them how the information is distributed, regardless of who paid for it. If the buyer asks for an appraisal, the lender is obligated by law to release that information. Your appraisal is valid for six months, but market prices can change quickly. Many lenders will only consider an appraisal to be valid for about three months. Any changes to the market or the property can drastically alter the value price. 

March 31, 2015

How Are Millennials Affecting the Housing Market?

Screen Shot 2015-03-30 at 11.36.31 PMThat the odds stacked against Millennials isn’t necessarily secret. Those who are between the ages of eighteen and thirty-three have several factors set against them in the search for financial stability. Many struggle under crushing student loan debt; others can’t find a well-paying job to even begin paying off said loan debt. Between these and any number of other contributing factors, Millennials struggle to enter the housing market. As a result, several authorities in the real estate market were recently asked whether they thought Millennials were dragging down the housing market; their responses were collected for an article recently completed by U-T San Diego.

Nearly all those asked noted that several factors that are beyond the control of Millennials play a role in their difficulties to join the housing market and become homeowners. Several factors include difficulty paying off their very expensive college degree—specifically in finding an actual job that is capable of paying off student debt—tight lending standards, high housing prices, a delay in marrying and/or starting a family and hesitancy due to seeing friends and family suffer through debt of their own. As a result of all of these factors, Millennials are forced to live at home with parents for an extended period of time—longer than any other previous generation. Alternatively, even those who are able to find a job to help pay off their various debts, the job does not often pay enough to afford to become a homeowner in the slowly recovering economy; many are forced to settle as renters.

However, despite all of the struggles that exist against Millennials, many of the authorities asked believe that the desire to become homeowners is strong. Leslie Kilpatrick, president of the Greater San Diego Association of Realtors, cited a study recently conducted by the California Association of Realtors found that the majority of Millennials plan to buy a home in the next five years. Although all those asked agree that an economic turn around is needed for this statistic to become a reality, some are seeing the signs of the start of a turn around. Home prices have stabilized and interest rates remain at historic lows. Credit availability and lending guidelines have improved and finally fewer investors are in competition with first-time buyers. All of these factors combined may indicate a positive future for Millennials entering the housing market. All authorities asked on the issue believe that the group holds enough in number and in power to have a strong influence on the housing market, should they decide to pursue owning a home instead of renting.