How Long Does a Home Appraisal Take?

The duration of a home appraisal is often a matter of concern for many people. It may be because of a certain reason or just out of curiosity.

While asking this question, one may intend to ask how long does it take to prepare a home appraisal report or maybe how much time the home appraiser will spend at their home. On the other hand, they may also intend to know how long the entire process of obtaining an appraisal takes. In this blog, we will answer the latter question as it also answers the former ones.

Having completed thousands of home appraisals in Chicago, we have a very good idea of what goes into the home appraisal process and how long everything takes. There are several factors that may influence the duration of a home appraisal process. Besides, the overall process of a home appraisal can be divided into three phases. Read on to know all about it.

3 Phases of a Home Appraisal

There are three main phases of a home appraisal that make up the entire process. Each of them takes a different amount of time and adds to the total time the process takes. Below we briefly explain each of them:

Scheduling the Appraisal:

After deciding you need a home appraisal, you need to find a reputable appraiser and schedule an appraisal with them. It usually takes 1-7 days, depending on the availability of the appraiser and how fast you manage to find one.

On-Site Inspection:

Once the appraiser arrives at your home, they may spend between 30 minutes to a few hours on your property. This time spent varies depending on various factors that we will cover below. For our calculation purposes, we will count this as 1 day.

Don’t confuse this step with a home inspection, that is a different thing.

Report Preparation:

This is how long it takes for the appraiser to prepare an appraisal report after they leave your property with the gathered information. This duration varies by each home appraisal company. For example, AnDel Appraisals has a turn-around time of 3 days (something seen very rarely in our industry). Usually, companies take up to 7 days for report preparation. So, we can say this phase takes between 3-7 days.

So, by adding up all three phases, we can say the complete home appraisal process can take between 5 to 15 days. Now let’s explore the external factors that influence the duration of this process. This can help you narrow down the aforementioned range.

Factors That Influence the Home Appraisal Process Duration

There are several factors that directly or indirectly affect the time it takes the home appraisal process to complete.

• Property Size and Complexity: Larger or unique properties can take longer to appraise. This will mainly affect the duration of the on-site inspections and report preparation.
• How Prepared the Homeowner is: If the homeowner is well prepared prior to the appraisal, the process may take significantly less time, and vice versa. Being well prepared would mean preparing the property by cleaning, decluttering, etc., and having all the necessary information ready. This will also affect the duration of the on-site inspections and report preparation.
• Market Conditions: If the real estate market is really busy, it will decrease the appraiser availability. It will naturally take longer for you to schedule a home appraisal with a company. It may also affect the report preparation time as the home appraisers will have a lot going on.
• Location: Rural areas or hard-to-access properties may take longer. It may be relatively difficult to find an appraiser in such locations.

We hope this information will help you better estimate how long the home appraisal process takes. If you are looking for a reputable home appraisal company to provide a professional appraisal in the least amount of time, AnDel Appraisals can help you. Give us a call at +1 (847) 961-4826, and we can talk.