Attention homeowners in Portland and Multnomah County: Need an appraisal?

Here are the top 7 reasons OR homeowners order from James McKenzie:

Get a pre-listing appraisal (whether you're using an agent or selling the home on your own)
Challenge property tax assessments
Remove PMI to cut a monthly mortgage payment
To reinstate their Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC)
Verify another appraiser's report
If real estate needs to be divided because of a divorce
To determine the true market value of real estate in question to settle an estate in OR

Do you own a house in or near Portland? Do you need help determining the value of your real estate?
Contact James McKenzie.

We at James McKenzie understand the special needs of a customer in need of appraisal services. Our business practices and reporting formats are familiar to our business clients like lenders, attorneys, and CPAs. Being a regular consumer that ordinarily doesn't look at appraisals every day,you'll receive extra guidance and explanations through the appraisal process to more fully understand what we do and how we report the results of our analysis.

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

Since you have an emotional attachment to your house, it's often very hard to be objective about it. A professional appraiser is objective and will tell you what you need to know, not just what you want to hear. A professional appraisal is very important as a negotiating tool once you have an interested buyer, in addition to helping you set a realistic selling price so your property will attract interested buyers. It's something concrete to show the buyer. An appraisal is an independent third party's opinion of your property's price -- not just how much your home is worth. Interested buyers assume you have an emotional attachment to your home and will be far more likely to give credibility to a professional appraiser's value assessment than yours.

Appraisals to cancel PMI

A preferred way to cut expenses for homeowners is to get the PMI removed 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 less than 80% of the value of your house. In most cases you can apply to the lender to have the PMI canceled from your loan. We're experts in helping homeowners just like you get rid of unneeded and unwanted PMI insurance.

Challenge Multnomah county's assessment of your property

Your local tax assessor may have your home overvalued if you live in a local area that's declining. That means you're going to pay more taxes than you should. Since your property assessment may likely go up again in the next period, the sooner you take care of things like this, the better. When challenging your property tax assessment, getting a professional appraisal from James McKenzie is your perfect weapon.

Was your HELOC recently frozen?

Even if your specific property has not declined in value, your lender might decide to automatically freeze your home equity line of credit (HELOC) if your home is near a declining area. This can be be unfavorable to 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. James McKenzie can help you reinstate your home equity line of credit with a professional appraisal.

Need Field and Desktop Appraisal Review Services?

Would you like a second opinion without the expense and delay of waiting for a whole new appraisal? Or do you need a seasoned expert to double-check your appraisal for accuracy? James McKenzie offers field reviews where we go out and check the subject and comps. Or, if you need it in a rush, we can provide desk review and verify as many facts as we can using online data sources as well as our own files.

Need a retrospective review of an appraisal? We can help you with that While typically requested by banks, you may want to make use of this service if you suspect mortgage fraud related to your house.