You have a couple of options when your sales price differs from your appraised value.
What happens when there’s a difference between your home’s sale price and the appraisal value? This
conundrum comes up a lot when there are big increases in property values over a short period.
Well, we have a couple of ways to address the issue:
**1. The agent can submit a rebuttal.** Your agent can compile a list of comparable sales and send it
to the appraisal company to show them why the appraised value was formed in error. Appraisers
aren’t perfect, and increased business can add pressure to their jobs, causing them to make
mistakes. However, most rebuttals aren’t accepted, except in the cases of short sales.
**2. Try to negotiate.** If the rebuttal isn’t successful, it’s time to try negotiating. Most of the time, buyers
in our market have to come up with the difference between the appraised value and the sales price,
so a good negotiation tactic is to cut that difference in half—especially in the case of FHA loans.
The reason that sellers must yield half of the difference is that the appraised value will stay on the
record for 120 days. If you don’t sell to the FHA buyer, you’ll be locked into that appraised value for four
months.
“This conundrum comes up a lot when there are big increases in property values over a short period.”
If you’d like more details on how to navigate this issue, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I love to
respond to your questions. Hope to hear from you soon!
