Real estate appraisal services for homeowners in the city of Burlington and Des Moines County

The top 7 reasons IA homeowners use Carol Huffman:

  1. Pre-listing appraisals (whether you're using an agent or selling the home on your own)
  2. Challenge property tax assessments
  3. Remove PMI to reduce a monthly mortgage payment
  4. To reinstate their Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC)
  5. Verify a different appraiser's report
  6. If real estate property needs to be divided because of a divorce
  7. Determine the true market value of property in question to settle an estate in IA

Need help determining the price of your house in or near Burlington, IA?
Contact Carol Huffman.

At Carol Huffman, we understand the unique needs of a customer in need of appraisal services. The appraisal process and reporting formats are familiar to our business clients like banks, attorneys, and accountants. Being a homeowner that ordinarily doesn't look at appraisals every day,we will provide you with extra guidance and explanations through the appraisal process to better understand what we do and how we document our findings.

For-Sale-By-Owner (FSBO) / Pre-Listing Services

It's very hard to be objective about your own home because of your emotional attachment to it. Professional appraisers, like the ones at Carol Huffman, will be objective. We will tell you what you need to know, not just what you want to hear. In addition to helping you set a realistic price to sell at so your home will attract many interested buyers, a professional appraisal is a crucial negotiating tool once you have a likely buyer. The appraisal is something tangible to show your buyer. It's an independent third party's opinion of your home's price, and not just you saying how much your house is worth. Interested buyers know you have an emotional attachment to your home and will be more likely to give credibility to an experienced appraiser's value conclusion than yours.

Need to cancel PMI?

A preferred way to save money for homeowners is getting the PMI eliminated from their mortgage loan, thus saving them money on their monthly payments. PMI stands for "Private Mortgage Insurance". Your monthly payments will go down once your mortgage loan amount is below 80% of the value of your property. In most cases you can apply to a lender to have the PMI canceled from your loan. At Carol Huffman, we're veterans in helping clients just like you delete unneeded and unwanted PMI insurance.

Challenging property tax assessments

Your local tax assessor may have your house overvalued if you live in a region that's declining. That means you're paying more taxes than you should. Since your property assessment may likely go up again in the next period, the earlier you take care of a matter like this, the better off you'll be. Getting an appraisal report from Carol Huffman is your chief weapon when contesting your property tax assessment.

Was your HELOC recently frozen?

Your lender may just make the decision to automatically freeze your home equity line of credit (HELOC) if your home is near a declining area -- even if your specific property has not declined in value. This can be be bad for your credit score since it may appear as though that credit line is maxed out, and also troublesome from a cash flow point of view. Carol Huffman can help you reinstate your HELOC.

Need Field and Desktop Appraisal Review Services?

Would you prefer a second opinion without the charge and delay of waiting for a whole new appraisal? Or do you want an expert to double-check your appraisal for preciseness? An appraiser from Carol Huffman can go out and check the subject and comparables in question in a field review. Or, if you need it ASAP, we can provide desk review and verify as many facts as we can using online data sources as well as our own files.

Do you need a retrospective review of an appraisal report? Carol Huffman can help you with that. Even though this is usually requested by banks, you may want to exploit this service if you suspect mortgage fraud related to your property.