Are you wondering how much your home is worth in the current market? Maybe you want to sell or maybe you need the value for something else (refinancing, divorce, etc). Whatever your situation, don't rely on those online calculators/estimators like Zillow, and the dozens of others out there. There are so many you could probably get 10 different values for your home in 10 minutes. The problem is that they can be 10%-30% off depending on the type of home you have, where it is, the comparables around you, and so much more. If you are thinking of selling, the best way to get an accurate value is to talk to an agent in your area. Of course, if you're in the metro Richmond area, I would love to help you. Remember, Zillow doesn't have any idea if you've renovated your kitchen six months ago. So whether your house is better or worse than the neighbor's homes around it, or the comparables that have sold around it, you want to make sure that the information on your particular home is accurate, and you don't accidentally overprice (or underprice) it when you go to market. If you're looking at another type of situation, where you're not going to sell your home, I would recommend getting a valuation from a licensed appraiser. They're going to give you a more official document that is going to fly in court or a divorce case. If you're looking to refinance, the lender is going to make you get an appraisal and that's going to be what they're going to base their information on. So there are a few different reasons why you might want to know the value of your home, but if you seriously want to know the value, don't rely on these online estimators because they are often incorrect. If you're in the Richmond metro area, give me a call or send me a message. I'd love to help. I'll come take a look at your house, and give you an idea of where it stands in the current market. If you're in another area and you need a licensed agent there that's going to do the same, let me know. I'm happy to put you in touch with somebody. I have connections all over the country.

"I think I want to sell my house, but I don't feel like doing anything to it. Can I just put a sign in the yard, get it on the market, and be done with this whole thing?" Sometimes when you're a seller, those are the things that come to mind. That's what you really would like to do, right? It's kind of a pain to get your home ready for market. And we're in a seller's market, right? This ought to be easy, your house is pretty nice, just throw a sign in the yard, and let's just get it gone. Before you do that, let's think about the ramifications of putting your home on as is and why you may or may not want to do that. First off, think about the reasons why you might want to put your home on as is. So yeah, that's kind of a pain. But often, people think "I want to go as is", and really, their home doesn't need anything except maybe some paint, some caulk, a little touch-up here and there, it's not that big of a deal. If you don't have time to do some of those things that in a lot of cases can be done by the homeowner, I have a great bunch of resources, handy people and contractors, painters, etc., that can come in and knock those things out in just a couple of days. But let's say it's a financial thing and everything is just a little bit of a bigger deal than the paint, the caulk, and so on. The kitchen is older or whatever. Usually, when you say as is, buyers, especially in this climate of higher interest rates, where buyers are being a little more picky, they're being a little more particular with how they spend their money. When you say as-is people immediately think what's wrong, something's wrong. And it's going to be very expensive for me, and it's going to make them not even come to look at your house. So in most cases, you're going to be better off by just letting it letting it roll. So if you know that you've got some plumbing issues, probably they're going to be, you know, maybe no major, big deal, but it's going to have to be done, you're almost always going to be better off getting someone to do those things before putting your home on the market. Even if you are short on money, and you need to find somebody who's going to let you pay for those things out of the proceeds when you actually sell. But if you do those things ahead of time, then you're going to have a better experience overall. The buyer is going to feel more comfortable purchasing the home and it's going to be a smoother transaction, smoother process, and get it sold faster and usually for more money. So as soon as you say as-is, people immediately think there might be something wrong. But if you just let people have an inspection, remember to disclose if there are actually major issues with your home. If the panel box is sparking, you need to let people know that we are a buyer-beware state, but we do have to disclose material defects or major issues to the home. So if you're aware of them, you have to let people know. And better than letting people know, getting them fixed beforehand. Even if it takes a little bit of money, a little bit of time, a little bit of hassle. Trust me, it'll be worth it in the end. There are certainly cases where selling your home as-is is the way to go. But that's a case-by-case situation. And pricing has a big effect on that too. So if you've just inherited grandma's house, you don't know anything about it. You don't have the time, the bandwidth, the money, the energy to get those things done, as is maybe the way to go, but we're then going to price accordingly. So case by case situation, give me a call, send me a message. Let's set up a time to take a look, talk through it, and see what your options are. If you're in the Richmond metro area, I'd love to help give me a call, and let's get started.

If you're thinking about selling your home and you have things, especially in your yard, you might be thinking, they're not going to care if I take my great grandmother's prized hydrangea that I moved to my house 10 years ago, think again. Anything, and that goes from the chandelier in your dining room to the shrubs that you brought from the old home, anything that you don't want to convey, it is always better for you to get that out of the house before it goes to market. If you get it out before you go to market, you erase any possibility that the buyer is going to want that item that you have decided you want to take with you where you are going. So make sure that before you go, putting a sign in your yard, you've done a thorough walkthrough of yeah, both the yard and the inside of the house to ensure that anything you want to take is removed and not tempting to the buyer. Once upon a time, I had sellers sell a home, didn't tell them this, they dug up all of the shrubs out front because they had just bought them and filled all of the holes with dead leaves. What happens in that instance? Closing can be delayed. It obviously causes some strife between buyer and seller, and was it worth the price of those little tiny boxwoods? I'm not so sure. So, better to be safe than sorry and make sure that you have covered everything you want to go with you and clear it with the buyer if it's something they saw beforehand. So if you want to know what can stay, what should leave, what you need to notify your purchaser of and you're thinking of selling your home this spring and summer, give me a call and we can walk through all of those circumstances to make sure that you not only get a contract but you get it to closing and you close on time.

So if you've followed along thus far with all of my videos about appraisals and how they might impact your transaction, thank you. This is the sort of wrap-up. I'm going to talk about a couple of frequently asked questions, commonly asked questions, and maybe a few interesting experiences that have happened with appraisals, that I don't know, kind of throw a curveball, or give you a little bit more food for thought. So one of the commonly asked questions is, if I'm selling my home, and the house contracted for $450k, the appraisal came in at $425k, does that mean I'm losing $25,000? Well, remember, you never had the $450k. So that's sometimes the data just is what the data is and unfortunately, or fortunately, the appraisers don't really consider the the vibes of the house, the vibes of the deal. So just because you are the purchaser and loved the house enough to be willing to pay $450k, if they don't love the house enough to be willing to pay $450k, and they also have a suitcase full of cash to match their vibes, it doesn't really matter, because most people who are getting a loan are going to have an appraisal, and that appraisal is going to be sort of the buck stops here of the value of the house. So yeah, you didn't get what you wanted to get maybe, or you didn't get what you were thinking you were gonna get. But odds are, you're not going to have a drastic difference in another set of data or another appraiser coming with another buyer, perhaps, if that buyer too does not have a suitcase full of cash to bridge the difference between $425k and $450k. Does that make sense? So let's look at the flip side of the same coin and let's say I'm the seller, and I have my house contracted with a buyer for $450,000, we get the appraisal back. And lo and behold, it came in at $475k. Am I clicking up my heels and saying, oh my gosh, I just made an extra $25,000? Not so fast. So this is great for the buyer. In most cases, the buyer does then have a little instant extra equity beyond what they had thought, but at the end of the day, know that price only shifts downward. Should the appraisal come in low, it never goes up. So while it might be a little frustrating, and you might feel like you lost money or left money on the table, remember, you didn't have that money to begin with. This is just kind of a numbers accounting situation and in many cases, you're not even going to see the appraisal. So don't get real tied up in what the lender or the appraiser determines what the value of your house is. If it goes beyond the sales price that you've agreed upon, just remember that you agreed upon that sales price and unless you have other people who were willing to pay more for your house, this is what you agreed to and this is what the open market was willing to value your house at. Thanks for following along if you have any other questions about appraisals or how they can affect your transaction, whether you're buying or selling, drop in the comments or reach out to me and I'd love to help you get your questions answered so you're more well informed when you're ready to buy or sell your home.

Okay, so let's say you got a contract for $450,000, but the appraisal came in at $425,000. Maybe you don't have $25,000 extra to throw at it. If you're the buyer, you're trying to get creative and think of other solutions. Maybe you go back to the seller and you say, hey, you know, well, we're able to do $435,000, but that's all we can do. We'll put $10,000 extra towards it, but that's all we can do. That's all we're able to do, willing to do, whatever. Maybe the seller comes back and says, yes, that works. Maybe you split the difference. Again, in real estate, as long as everybody agrees almost anything, as long as it's legal, is on the table. Everybody just has to agree and it all has to be in writing. Follow along for more appraisal tips, tricks, understandings, commonly asked questions, and situations that might arise whether you're on the buying end or the selling end.

So maybe you've followed along with my appraisal series, maybe you're in a transaction, maybe you're contemplating what might happen in a transaction and you're thinking, but Cindy, we don't want to put an extra $10,000, $20,000 in a house if it didn't appraise. What do we do now? Well, obviously, nobody wants to feel like they're overpaying and I think overpaying is a real relative term when we are in the market that we've been in for the last few years really. Overpaying really is a nebulous idea. If 10 people want the house and the house was listed at $410k, and it gets bid up to $450k, and there were multiple offers. You competed against nine other people, you got the house at $450k. Good for you. You won. But now the appraisal comes in at $425k and you don't know what to do. You don't have an extra $25,000 to get you there. So there are a few options. And I've talked about some in other videos. But what if you want to dispute the appraisal? What if you feel like hey, this is not right. I feel like this house is really worth $450k and I want to make sure that my deal doesn't fall apart because we love this house. Or maybe you're the seller and you say listen, I had 10 people want to buy my house, and fair and square, we got bid up to $450k. Now some person is coming in and telling me and the buyers that it's only worth $425k. You're really throwing a wrench in my plans. What do you do in those cases? Well, you can dispute an appraisal, but it is a process. Because the lenders really want to make sure that it's an unbiased sort of set of data and an unbiased opinion of value, they're not real keen on the agents, whether listing or buyer's agents, or the buyers and sellers getting real involved in that process and trying to manipulate that data. Because again, unbiased means they're looking at data, and the data is the data. But I have had situations where we were successfully able to dispute the appraisal. It doesn't happen often though. You really have to have, again, data to go back to the appraiser and say, here is a comparable that you did not use. Why didn't you use this comparable? It almost never works, because these people do their job and the appraisal has to be reviewed by someone else in their office as well. It's not a one person saying check, yes, this house has, you know, everything that it takes to be a $450,000 house. It really has to have all of the supporting information and it gets reviewed a number of times before that stamp goes on to say this is complete. So if you do have comparables that show something or when you look at the appraisal, they have missed something that is an integral part of your house, it's got a brand new roof, but they noted that the roof was old because maybe they made a mistake or you know, they're human. So maybe somebody didn't have all their coffee that day and thought the roof looked old. There is a process, through which it's a little different with every lender, you can dispute the appraisal, but just remember that odds are it's not usually going to go in your favor. So you may need to look at some of the other options to work that appraisal out. If you have any questions about the appraisal process or the appraisal dispute process, drop them in the comments or reach out to me. I'd love to help you. Figure out how you might deal with such an occurrence. But if you're currently in a transaction, I'm going to say reach out to your lender, your agent or your attorney and figure out how to best deal with that situation.

All right, so let's talk about the nuts and bolts when we're talking about appraisals. Who pays for the appraisal anyway? And if I'm selling my home, and somebody's gonna come in and put a value on it, that's different than the value I put on it and my listing agent put on it, who is this person? Who are they working for? And how does this whole thing work? Well, the buyer pays for the appraisal. And yes, if you are the buyer, you are going to have to pay for the appraisal outside of closing. It is kind of sort of rolled into your closing costs, but generally, your closing costs are going to be paid at settlement on the closing day, and the appraisal is going to have to be paid beforehand. Why? Well, because in the instance that the appraisal throws a curveball to the whole situation, and you don't end up closing those appraisers would never get paid, because nobody is going to pay for a sour deal that didn't go through. So your lender is going to require that you pay that appraisal cost up front. And those numbers can vary, but usually between $500 and $1,000, is about where you're going to land in our area. Again, I work in Richmond, Virginia, and all the surrounding counties, you know, in central Virginia, and that's kind of a common cost here. In the event of an appraisal dispute where you or the seller may request a new appraisal or a new appraiser, then that cost can be shared, it can be split, or sometimes the seller might offer to pay. Again, anything like that, as long as it's legal can be worked out as long as everybody agrees on it. Generally speaking, though, the data is what the data is. So you want to look long and hard before you pay for a new appraisal if the data is not going to be any different. First, you're going to try to dispute that original appraisal before you go looking for a new appraisal or a new appraiser. Because, if they're going to pull the same data, then you've just wasted $500 to $1,000. Follow along for more information about appraisers about appraisals, how the whole experience works, and what it can do to affect or impact your transaction whether you're buying or selling.

So we know what the appraiser does, who they are kind of, but who picks them? And okay, I can't pick them. But who does? And how does that affect me? Well, if you're the purchaser, you really don't have any input on the appraisal process or who gets to do your appraisal or anything like that. Ultimately the appraiser works for the lender. They are making sure that if the lender is going to loan you $400,000, that the property is actually worth $400,000. Now, maybe you're paying $450,000 for the home, but the lender is only going to be loaning you $400,000. The lender needs to make sure that whatever they're giving you is, if it's an 80% loan, if it's a 75% loan, whatever, that they are covered for the amount that they have invested in the property. In other words, the lender usually has a larger financial stake than you do in the property and they want to make sure that should you stop paying and they get stuck with that house, that they can actually sell it for what it's worth, not just what you think it's worth. Follow along for my whole series on appraisals and appraisers, to get a little better feel about what goes on in the appraisal process and why it matters to you whether you're a buyer or a seller.

Do you want to watch the game (or maybe just the commercials and snippets of Taylor) and love the energy of a crowd but don't want to be managing the food and friends at your place? I've got you. Here is a short list of some places you can watch the game, AND get great food, great drinks, all without having to cook or clean up! Where are YOU watching?     Island Shrimp Co. Super Bowl Luau  Head to Island Shrimp Co at Rocketts Landing for a full spread of island-inspired eats through halftime including Island BBQ Wings, Kalua Pork Sliders, ISCO's signature shrimp, veggie fried rice, and more! Each ticket comes with 2 Painkillers to get the party started with a taste of the islands. They're even hosting some giveaways at halftime! $45 (tickets required) Cabo Fish Taco Cabo Fish Taco is hosting a great watch party, with 7 screens,  an All You Can Eat Taco Bar and drink specials all evening for $20. (tickets required) Always good for a game, snacks, and drinks...(just arrive early!) Address: 3022 W Broad St, Richmond, VA 23230 Wood & Iron Game Day Short Pump: 12288 W Broad St, Henrico, VA 23233 Midlothian: 11400 W. Huguenot Road, #109B, Midlothian, VA 23113 Scott's Addition: 1405 Roseneath Rd, Richmond, VA 23230 Pizza and Beer Richmond The Fan: 2553 W Cary St, Richmond, VA 23220 Hanover: 9325 Chamberlayne Rd, Mechanicsville, VA 23116 Gus' Bar and Grill Address: 2701 W. Broad St., RVA 23220 HomeTeam Grill Address: 1630 W. Main Street, Richmond, VA 23220

Richmond, Virginia always offers a variety of engaging events, and late January 2023, perfect for those looking to explore the cultural and entertainment offerings of the city. Here's a snapshot of four events that I'm adding to my calendar: BLUES PARTY! at Orbital Music Park (January 22, 2024): For music enthusiasts, the BLUES PARTY! hosted by Orbital Music Park is a must-attend. Taking place at Révéler Experiences, this event celebrates blues classics with live performances. It's an interactive experience where musicians of all levels are welcome to join, and audience participation is encouraged. The event runs from 7:30 PM to 10:30 PM, offering an evening of great music and community spirit​​. Vegan Food Week 2024 (January 23 to January 28, 2024): Foodies will love the Vegan Food Week, a week-long celebration of vegan cuisine in Richmond. This event sees local participating businesses showcasing their vegan specials. Highlights include free sweet treats from Ruby Scoops Ice Cream & Sweets for visitors who explore five or more locations, and a special Carrot Ginger Kombucha by Ninja Kombucha. It's a great opportunity to explore the city's vegan culinary scene​​. LINE DANCE TUESDAYS at River City Roll (January 23, 2024): Put on your dancing shoes for LINE DANCE TUESDAYS at River City Roll. Hosted by Carlos “The Line Dance Prince”, this event offers a fantastic Line Dance class from 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM. It's a fun way to stay active and meet new people, and you can also enjoy Happy Hour starting at 5pm before the class begins​​. Trivia Night at Bingo (January 23, 2024): For a night of fun and brain teasers, Trivia Night at Bingo is the place to be. Held every Tuesday and Thursday from 7 PM to 9 PM, this event is hosted by Trivia Ball of Fire Entertainment. It's a great way to test your knowledge, enjoy some friendly competition, and possibly win some prizes​​. These events are just a glimpse of what the Richmond area has to offer this January.  From music and food to dancing and trivia, there's something for everyone to enjoy in this vibrant city. If you're looking for more info on Richmond, or you're thinking of making a move, send me a message, or follow me on social!