Determining the value of homes isn’t an exact science, making it a difficult task to get right. This means it’s sometimes important to hire a home appraiser to value your house for you. While you’re completely fine not knowing the market value of your property most of the time, there are a few instances when hiring a home appraiser is a necessity. Here are the three different times you’ll need to get your home professionally valued.

Real Estate Transactions

Whenever a home is bought or sold, an appraiser needs to get involved. This is generally done after the buyer has placed an offer on the house and the seller has agreed to the offer. At this point, the buyer should always schedule an inspection followed by a professional appraisal. The reason the appraisal happens so far along this process is that they’re expensive to conduct, so it’s best not to schedule more than absolutely necessary.

The inspection and appraisal are vital parts of this transaction for multiple reasons. The first is that you want to be sure you’re not paying more than you should be for the house. An inspection can turn up previously unknown costly issues, and the valuation can state the home isn’t worth as much as you’ve offered. In this event, you can use the valuation to either renegotiate your offer or back out of the offer altogether.

The second reason the house appraisal is so important is that it’s required for you to qualify for your mortgage. Lenders won’t give you a mortgage that’s higher than the home is worth, so they’ll use the valuation to determine how much you can borrow to pay for the house. If you end up offering more than the house was valued, you’ll need to come up with that extra income elsewhere.

Refinancing Your Home

Because you won’t be able to get a mortgage exceeding your home’s worth, it’s also essential to get a house valuation if you ever need to refinance your home. As home appraisers determine the fair market value of your home, it has to get done at the time you want your home refinanced. Because the housing market fluctuates over time, the value of your home is likely to have changed.

Changes in the quality of your home will also affect the appraisal at the time. If you’ve kept up with repairs and maintenance on your home, that will show in the appraisal. Any upgrades or additions will also increase its value. On the other hand, if you haven’t been keeping up with maintenance and your home needs repairs, that will negatively impact your home’s value.

Insurance

Finally, you’re also going to want to get your home professionally valued for insurance purposes. This is to ensure your home insurance will be enough to cover the value of your house, and that you’ll be paying appropriate premiums for your coverage. With the home appraisal, you’ll be able to work with your insurer to create a customized plan that you’ll know will be fit for your house.

While it isn’t necessary to get a professional appraisal for insurance, it helps. This way, if your home is to get damaged from events such as a fire or a flood, you’ll receive enough money to cover all the damages. If you’re untrained in valuing houses but try to do this yourself, you could end up being way off the mark. This could result in you either paying far more for premiums than you should be or not having enough value covered for insurance to pay off the damages.

If you’re thinking of buying or selling, get in touch with one of our professional real estate agents. REALTORS® are also experienced in valuing homes, making them essential help for both buyers and sellers.