Selling a Home Without an Appraisal in Sacramento

Selling a home without an appraisal can result in a much higher price.

Selling a home without an appraisal in Sacramento is not that difficult to do if you identify which homes might qualify for this set of circumstances. You may ask how do you do that? Well, for starters, you hire an experienced Sacramento Realtor who knows how to spot these types of homes. I remember a while back when I shared with a reporter from the Washington Post how I sold a home in Elk Grove without an appraisal and pulled underwater sellers out from under the house by selling over appraised value. I saved them from a short sale.

That reporter asked how does a person go about finding an agent who can do that? I don’t really know. I only know how I do it. I don’t play by the so-called expected rules all of the time, especially when I don’t have to. For example, most agents would run the comparable sales and try to determine a fair market value. If they’re really good agents and they actually pull up photos of the sold comps and compare interiors, upgrades, with the subject property, if they study the landmarks in Google to make sure they’re not analyzing homes on the wrong side of the street, they can produce a value the way an appraiser might do it; that’s one way.

But there are other ways to determine value. Part of selling a home without an appraisal in Sacramento is to determine demand. The way I sold the home in Elk Grove that by all practical standards was an underwater property and pulled those sellers out of short sale status was to figure out how to make that home appeal to an investor. I looked at what was available for sale and figured a 3-bedroom, 2-bath would produce X amount of income, it was in good condition, and I pushed the price to a breakeven cashflow point. It sold to a Bay Area investor for a lot more than it would appraise.

Contrary to popular belief, selling Sacramento real estate is not always about win-win. Nobody says things have to be equal or fair. Everybody has their own agenda. My agenda for my sellers is to get them the highest price. Not necessarily the price the home might appraise at. Selling a home without an appraisal in Sacramento is one way to accomplish that goal.

A buyer asked me the other day about buying a home. He asked too many questions, which made me think he had so many objections, he might pull out of an escrow. I explained our seller’s market, low inventory, high demand, multiple offers. Yet, he offered less than list price, knowing others would probably offer more, hoping, I suppose, we’d get only one cash offer instead of more than than one cash offer. I have that ability to figure out what a buyer will pay and market to those kinds of buyers.

I asked his agent why the buyer did not do what I told him he needed to do to buy the house. Her response was she didn’t think it would appraise at the amount we were asking. Why, she’ll have me know that she’s been an appraiser in a previous life. So, they offered a fair price. A market price.

I ask you, what does any of that have to do with the price of tea in China? Market price is what a seller is willing to sell at and what a buyer is willing to pay. It’s not appraised value.