What does a real estate appraiser look for?
Depends on if it’s FHA or not. Non-FHA pretty much measures the rooms to get square footage, considers things like “what percentage of the basement is finished”, attached garage, how many bedrooms/baths and compares it with similar houses that have sold recently in your neighborhood – not much FOR them to look at, more size/build of the house than “did you recently remodel your bathroom” or anything like that. An FHA appraiser does all of the above and additionally looks for signs of neglect – signs of mold, holes in drywall, missing windows, etc. and reports them to the mortgage company, who considers if there are things they want you to fix before they’ll be willing to finance you. Basically, b/c FHA’s gov’t insured or some such, they want to know the house isn’t falling apart – normal appraiser won’t need to see an unfinished attic/crawl space, FHA will. They’ll still base the value pretty much the same way though.
