What types of things will an underwriter look for when they review the appraisal?

In addition to verifying your home's value supports your loan request, we will also verify your home is as marketable as others in the area. We will want to be confident if you decide to sell your home, it will be as easy to market as other homes in the area.

While we certainly do not expect you to default under the terms of your loan and a forced sale will be necessary, as the lender, we will need to make sure that if a sale is necessary, it will not be difficult to find another buyer.

We will review the features of your home and compare them to the features of other homes in the neighborhood. For example, if your home is on a 20-acre lot, or has a large accessory building, we will want to make sure there are other homes in the area on similar size lots or with similar outbuildings. It is hard to place a value on such unique features if we cannot see what other buyers are willing to pay for them. In some areas, additional acreage or outbuildings could actually be a detriment to a future sale. Finding comparable properties can be more challenging in rural areas where it is more difficult to find homes that have similar features.

We will also make sure the value of your home is in the same range as other homes in the area. If the value of your home is substantially more than other homes in the neighborhood, it could affect the market acceptance of the home should you decide to sell.

We will also review the market statistics about your neighborhood. We will look at the time on the market for homes which have recently sold and verify values are steady or increasing.