Does location still matter most? Should you remodel your home to suit your tastes or for resale value? Are starter homes still a thing? We all have plenty of questions about the ever-changing world of real estate. In our Ask an Agent series, we’re partnering with experts at Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate to answer your biggest questions about finding, buying, and selling a home.

If you're in the process of selling your home, the last thing you want to hear is that your appraisal came in lower than what you were asking. This can cause a number of issues in your selling (and buying) process, including your potential buyer walking away from the deal. To learn how to handle this issue properly, we asked a seasoned real estate pro for his best advice.

The No. 1 Mistake First-Time Homebuyers Make, According to a Real Estate Agent

Jeff Martel

For this installment of Ask an Agent, we spoke with Jeff Martel, the owner and designated broker of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate 43° North in Boise, to discover what to do if your home appraisal comes in lower than you were expecting.

Jeff Martel is the owner and designated broker of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate 43° North in Boise, which specializes in new-construction sales and marketing, resale, and relocation throughout the Treasure Valley and beyond.

What Do I Do if My Home Appraisal Comes in Low?

If your home appraisal comes in lower than you were expecting, a good agent can make all the difference. A typical strategy we try to employ (often beforehand) is to make sure we can help the appraiser in any way, sometimes by doing things like meeting them at the home (some are open to it; some are not). There's kind of this misnomer in the industry that we're not allowed to talk to the appraiser; that we can't influence them in any way, and they're going to do their job separately. But if we have a contract in place—and we have a willing seller and a willing buyer—our job as an agent is to show the appraiser how we got to this point. We can show them the comparables we used; that doesn't mean they'll use them, but we'll definitely show them.

Hopefully, we've discussed all of this with the appraiser ahead of time, ensuring they understand where this value comes from and why there are willing sellers and buyers at that price. But this doesn't mean that every appraisal comes in where we were hoping it would. When this happens, it's the agent's job to ensure that the official appraisal is accurate and error-free. Mistakes could include the square footage being off, a concession being missed, or something else that's easy to overlook.

I've had mixed results in getting appraisals changed. Sometimes when it's set and submitted, that's it, and they're not going to change it. But I've had instances where there was something like a pretty big square-footage error, so the appraiser had to reassess and correct it. However, I'd say, 8 times out of 10, they're not going to reassess. As a last resort, you can go to the lender, who can hire another appraiser. We do this only if we have time and everyone agrees it's necessary.

Sometimes we do just get a bad appraisal, but 99% of the time, it's a good one, and agents might just look at value a little differently than the appraiser does. Occasionally, we have to go back to negotiations at that point and reach some sort of consensus between the seller and the buyer. Sometimes deals fall apart: if the seller is set on that price and the buyer is unwilling to pay beyond appraisal, everyone just, unfortunately, walks away. But most of the time, we, as agents, can hold it together and find a win-win solution for everybody.

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