Anonymous wrote:Congrats. But until you sell, it's just an unrealised gain.

Yeah, I know. But it might shave another 1/8 off the rate I'm getting, so it's still significant.

Anonymous wrote:Why are you all congratulating OP? An appraisal has nothing to do with the potential sales price of a home.

No, but it can have a huge impact on the refinancing options available to you.(Particularly if you are on the edge of the 20% equity threshold) Why shouldn't we congratulate someone when they receive good news?

Our appraisal came in right where we needed it to be, in spite of the fact that our local real estate assessment pegs it about 75k-100k higher. Which is great, since we'll use the first to appeal the second.

Why are you all congratulating OP? An appraisal has nothing to do with the potential sales price of a home.

Anonymous wrote:Those of you whose houses appraised for hundreds more than you thought, what price range are you talking about?

In my case, not that high of a price range for this area. We were expecting something around $425k or a little higher, and the appraisal came in around $550k.

Same here as well. Our refi appraisal was about $125k higher than we expected it to be. We are reasonably suspicious as well, since we aren't confident that the house would sell anywhere near the value given. There's not really any downside to a higher-than-expected appraisal though, unless one does something silly like trying to cash out all of the new-found equity. As long as you stick to the amount needed to refinance, there shouldn't be any issues.

Those of you whose houses appraised for hundreds more than you thought, what price range are you talking about?

Same here -- about 300K more than what we expected. I hope this is a trend! Sounds like the DC housing market might be turning.

Who are you refinancing with? We're trying to refi with Pen Fed right now and 2.5 weeks later still haven't received our appraisal. Annoying.

We bought a home, and the appraisal was $100,000 higher than what we paid.

congrats, OP!

I'm curious OP: was Zillow on the low end?

Congrats. But until you sell, it's just an unrealised gain.

that's awesome. I wish we could say the same so we could actually get a freaking home equity loan to make the big fixes to our house that we don't want to pull money out of savings for (old roof and hvac).

Congrats!

I bought a house last year. We lowballed the house and got it. to our surprise.

Already refinancing. Our appraisal just came back for $200,000 more than we paid in 2011.

Stunned. And a little suspicious.

FWIW, it's right between Zillow and one of the other online places.