How a Home Appraisal Works & How Much Does an Appraisal Company Charge?

A property appraisal is a very important process whether you are buying, selling, or refinancing your house. In the simplest of terms, an appraisal works to assign a value to the price of the house. This allows you to offer a fair price as a seller or buy a house at the right price for a buyer. Though the idea is pretty simple, the process is very taxing and requires lots of considerations before the final value could be given by the residential real estate appraiser.

A home appraisal is very different from a home inspection. If you are looking for a Toronto home appraisal, the appraiser would conduct a superficial inspection. On the other hand, a house inspection is an intrinsic process wherein the inspector pays much attention to details. An inspector is likely going to check the plumbing, the gas outlets, how capable the furnace is, and so on. An appraiser would only check superficial features such as the external structure of the roof, the presence or absence of plumbing on a house, and so on. This is because the appraiser only looks for ascertaining an average value to the hose.

There are also different kinds of appraisals available if you are looking for a home appraisal in Toronto. Hybrid appraisals include information obtained through third-party sources while similar desktop appraisal employs the use of technology. In the case of desktop appraisal, the third-party source does not exist and the appraiser considers available data such as property records and floor plans to set a value. A drive-by appraisal method also exists where only the external features are taken into consideration and are the ideal way to go when refinancing.

Generally, the buyer is the one who pays for the appraisal unless it has been pre-discussed by the seller. The buyer has to pay about $300- $1500 for the home appraisal report depending on the size of the house, i.e. whether it’s a single-family or a multi-family home. The cost of the appraisal increases with an increase in the size of the property and greatly depends on factors such as the location of the property.

When you are looking for Toronto home appraisals, you will note that it comes in two stages- firstly an inspection is conducted and then the appraiser sets a value. Inspection of a property may take as little as 15 minutes but may even take hours depending upon the size and location of the property. Technology is also being used regularly to aid in appraisal and make the process shorter. The use of technology for home appraisals has also led to a reduction in the cost of home appraisals since the work to be done has been reduced a lot.

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