How to Get Top Dollar for Your Home Despite Appraisal Hurdles

By Nick Waldner

Nick started and leads the #1 KW Team in all of Maryland and DC, selling over 400 homes a year! With 20+ years in the industry, he is the leading expert in Maryland!

Lately, we’ve noticed a trend where appraisals are becoming a hurdle in achieving the highest sales price possible for our clients. Let me share a recent experience to illustrate this.

We listed a house for $900,000. The most expensive house in the neighborhood had sold for $925,000, but it was larger with a bigger lot. While it wasn’t quite as nice, it definitely had more space.

We received an offer for $975,000, and we knew we were in for a challenge with the appraiser to get the value up and secure the best deal for our seller. To put it in perspective, we were aiming to sell a home for more than any other home in that community, even though it was slightly smaller than the highest-priced property.

And guess what? We did it.

So, how do we achieve this? There are a few key strategies we employ. First, when we meet with you, we take the time to learn about your home, its features, and everything that makes it special. Our sales pitch to a buyer is very similar to our sales pitch to an appraiser.

We meet with every appraiser face-to-face to help them understand the value of your home and get the appraisal as high as possible. We leverage all the unique aspects of your house to ensure it shines in the appraisal process, ultimately aiming for the highest possible appraisal value to maximize your profit.

In this particular case, while we couldn’t get the appraisal up to $975,000, we negotiated what’s called an appraisal gap. We got the buyer to agree that whatever the house appraised for, they would pay $50,000 above that number. The house appraised for $925,000, and we closed at $975,000.

This goes to show that if you’re working with the right agent who understands the market and the current conditions, you can secure the highest possible price for your house.

Give me a call—I’m happy to help you achieve the best outcome for your home sale.