Attention homeowners in Champaign and Champaign County: Need an appraisal?

The top seven reasons IL homeowners hire Appraisals By Trautman:

Find the right listing price (whether you're using an agent or selling the home on your own)
Challenge Champaign county's assessment of your property
To lower their monthly mortgage payment by removing PMI
To reinstate your Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC)
Verify a different appraiser's report
In the case of a IL divorce, where property needs to be divided
To settle an estate in IL by determining the true market value of real estate in question

Own a house in or near Champaign, IL and need help deciding the value of it?
Contact Appraisals By Trautman.

At Appraisals By Trautman, we understand the individual needs of a consumer seeking appraisal services. The appraisal process and reporting formats are relatively routine to our business clients like banks, attorneys, and CPAs. But as a consumer,we will provide you with extra guidance and explanations through the appraisal process to understand what we do and how we document the results of our analysis.

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

It's very hard to be objective about your own home because you most likely have an emotional attachment to 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 a crucial negotiating tool once you have an interested buyer, in addition to helping you set a realistic price to sell at so your property will attract many interested buyers. It gives you something tangible to show the buyer. It's an independent third party's opinion of your home's value, and not just you saying how much your house is worth. Interested buyers know that you have an emotional attachment to your home and will be more likely to give credibility to a professional appraiser's value judgement than yours.

Appraisals to remove PMI

PMI stands for Private Mortgage Insurance. A fashionable money saver for homeowners is getting the PMI removed from their mortgage loan, thus saving them money on their monthly payments. Your monthly payments will go down once your mortgage loan is less than 80% of the value of your property. In most cases you can apply to your lender to have the PMI canceled from your loan. We are veterans in helping customers just like you abolish unwanted PMI insurance.

Challenge a property tax assessment

Lets say you live in an area that's declining -- your local tax assessor may have your home overvalued. That means you are probably paying more taxes than you should. The sooner you take care of a matter like this, the better, since your property assessment may likely go up again in the next period. Getting a professional appraisal from Appraisals By Trautman is your strongest weapon when challenging your property tax assessment.

HELOC recently frozen?

If your property is in a declining area, your lender just may decide to automatically freeze your home equity line of credit (HELOC) - even if your specific property has not declined in value. This can be be destructive to your credit score since it may appear as though that credit line is maxed out, and also difficult and inconvenient from a cash flow viewpoint. Appraisals By Trautman can help you reinstate your HELOC.

We Provide Field and Desktop Appraisal Review Services

Would you prefer a second opinion without the expense and delay of waiting for a whole new appraisal? Or do you want a veteran appraiser to double-check your appraisal for verity? Appraisals By Trautman offers field reviews where we'll go out and check the subject and comps in question. If you're in a rush, we'll provide you with a desk review and verify as many facts as we can using online data sources as well as our own files.

We can also provide a retrospective review of any appraisal you may have had done before. Even though this is usually requested by banks, you may desire to exploit this service if you suspect mortgage fraud related to your property.