What makes us different?

There are a lot of appraisal firms our there. What makes Appraisal Services, Inc. different than other appraisal firms?

Senior appraiser Patrick Butler has been appraising for over 15 years and stays up-to-date with continuous education (see resume.) Mr. Butler is also a state Licensed Real Estate Broker. He will  not solicit you to list your house, but his brokerage experience gives him particular insight that many appraisers don’t have. Mr. Butler also buys and sells houses for his own investment portfolio and has extensive rehab experience. Many of Mr. Butler’s friends are in the real estate business— from surveyors, attorneys, title company owners, and other real estate brokers. He can get most any real estate question answered intelligently. This is important because properly developing an appraisal often times requires research into these other real estate related disciplines.

We have access to online research databases and access to the largest real estate library in the world. If your appraisal assignment requires extensive research, we have the tools to properly get the work done. We also are members of several appraisal related forums on the Internet. We regularly converse with literally hundreds of other appraisers on the Internet and these peers are an extremely valuable source of information.

We are ethical. Our profession is regulated by a number of different state and federal laws. We comply with those laws and are no longer surprised when we find evidence of other appraisers blatantly violating our industry standards. It is becoming all too common for some appraisers to provide appraisals that over value a house simply to ‘help out’ a mortgage company with providing a higher loan amount for a homeowner. It isn’t until that homeowner eventually needs to sell their house that they realize that they’ve borrowed too much money because of an inflated appraisal. If you want a reliable opinion of value developed by an ethical appraiser then we are the ones to call.

We use all the latest in appraisal technologies- the latest form filling software, sketching programs, online databases, digital cameras, imaging software, and advanced delivery methods. This allows us to process your appraisal order as quickly as possible and reduces the chance for errors.

We do quite a bit of litigation type appraisal work. This often requires that we produce excellent quality exhibits. We use professional quality SLR digital cameras and digital camcorders to capture our onsite data for these purposes. We have video editing software and skills and DVD creation software and skills for archiving your important data.

We can provide you an ‘electronic’ copy of your appraisal in the Adobe Acrobat PDF file. The charge for this is just an additional $5.00. If you do not need an actual printed copy of your appraisal from us, then we’ll provide the PDF file at no charge. You can then print out your own copies of your appraisal. Having an electronic copy of your appraisal makes it much more useful. You can easily email your appraisal to anyone having a need to see it.

We can provide you with a wide range of different types of appraisals. This allows you to save money by not paying for more appraisal than you need.

We offer a discount off our normal fee if you ever need to update your appraisal in the future. This is especially important if you order an appraisal for private mortgage insurance removal. If the value of your house isn’t high enough to satisfy the lender’s requirements to get your PMI removed, then you will be needing another appraisal in the future. We can provide that second appraisal at a substantially discounted fee.

We place an emphasis on customer service and make sure you order the right type of appraisal for your needs and understand what it means. We are pleased to answer any questions you may have after receiving your appraisal. We want to make sure that you understand your appraisal and encourage you to call us. With every appraisal order you’ll receive a free copy of our booklet, “Understanding Your Real Estate Appraisal.”

We can provide a special type of appraisal if you are considering selling your home by yourself. Most appraisers will just complete an appraisal for you but not provide any additional pricing information. It’s one thing to know the market value of your house, but quite another to know what your asking price should be. That requires that you have data on the competing properties in your neighborhood. We supply that data along with your appraisal so you can knowledgably set an asking price for your house. And Mr. Butler’s brokerage experience allows him to provide advice on staging your house for sale. This advice includes recommendations on what repairs and/or decorating should be done to enhance the salability of your house.

If you have a need to get an appraisal for PMI removal (see PMI) then we will work with any underwriting requests your lender may have. Rather than just providing you with an appraisal, we understand that your lender may still have some questions so we provide assistance in that area.