A couple of days ago I was sitting down to start writing a blog post on how to streamline the initial appraisal process, specifically gathering information on the subject property prior to doing the inspection. Over the weekend I listened to an episode of the podcast “Voice of Appraisal” where Phil Crawford mentioned an improvement worksheet that the Ohio Coalition of Appraisal Professionals (OCAP) has distributed to local area realtors. I recently contacted him and Steve Papin, the president of OCAP, who was kind enough to send me a copy. Here is the PDF (Property Questionnaire), or you can email me and I can send you the Word Doc that is formatted properly).

The main purpose of the questionnaire is to gather information that might otherwise be difficult to obtain. As you can see, the form provides the listing agent an opportunity to list all recent updates and any other details they would want an appraiser to know. Instead of springing all these questions on the agent at the time of the  inspection, by emailing a copy in advance they can have the time to do any necessary research and talk to their clients about the property before you even go there. And since it’s fairly often that a property is on a lock-box, you may not even meet the Realtor. Finally, at the end of the day you’ll have a document that can easily be saved to your work file.

In doing more research on these types of questionnaires, I saw that Ryan Lundquist of Sacramento Appraisal Blog, has also shared a “cheat sheet” that you can download here. This morning I was all set to wrap up my blog post by outlining even more benefits to these forms when I saw that Tom Horn, appraiser and author of the Birmingham Appraisal Blog, posted his own version of the “Property Questionnaire” here. So, clearly something is in the air folks! Tom’s blog post, as always, is top notch and has lots of good tips and suggestions for agents and homeowners alike.

I will most likely be creating my own form based on these three examples to include a section for any other additional features that the agent feels adds value to the property, or specific neighborhood info that the agent thinks is important. I suggest you do the same. Choose your own adventure or tailor one of these questionnaires to fit the Real Estate Agents in your own market! Once I’ve gotten mine whipped into shape, I’ll post it to my blog.