Hit the ground running after you get your appraisal
Most home appraisals are good for between 90 and 120 days.
Timelines can vary based on market conditions, the type of loan you’re getting, and your lender’s requirements.
In many cases, you can extend the validity of your appraisal by getting it updated rather than paying for a new report.
Most home sales will require an appraisal to move to mortgage underwriting, and once the appraisal is complete, the clock starts ticking. Appraisals are a professional assessment of value, and since home values fluctuate on a daily basis, appraisals come with a built-in expiration date. In this guide, we’ll explain how long appraisals are good for and discuss some factors that can affect your timeline.
In most cases, an appraisal is good for 90 to 120 days, which means you have three to four months to close before your appraisal expires and you have to order a new one. Some appraisals may only last as little as 30 days, while others can be good for an entire year. A land appraisal could be good for even longer, as land value fluctuates much more slowly than the value of homes.
There are a few factors that can affect your appraisal’s expiration timeline and leave you with as few as 30 days or as long as a year before you need to order a new one.
The type of loan you’re using can dictate how long your house appraisal is good for. Conventional loans, which are the most common, often require new appraisal reports after 90 to 120 days. Loans backed by the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA or Fannie Mae) and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) normally have the longest appraisal timelines. FNMA and FHA appraisals differ from an inspection that a standard appraiser would carry out and are often more intensive, meaning they’re better indicators of value.
| Loan Type | Appraisal Expires After |
|---|---|
| Conventional | 90–120 days |
| FHA | 180–240 days |
| FNMA | 120–365 days |
| USDA | 150–180 days |
| VA | 180 days |
Lenders can also impose their own limitations on how long they’ll accept an appraisal. Some lenders may require a new appraisal or an appraisal update every 30 days, but the standard is 90 to 120 days.
An appraisal report is an estimation of property value, and since values change constantly, the speed at which the market is changing can influence how long a lender is willing to accept your appraisal report.
In a particularly hot market, where prices are on the rise or rapidly decreasing, you may need to prepare for another appraisal after just 30 days. In particularly slow markets, where values are steady, they may extend their timeline to 180 days or more, as they’re taking less risk that the value will change over time.
The age of your home can affect how rapidly the value changes, even in a hot or slow market. Older homes will often fluctuate in value with the market, while new construction tends to take longer before the market affects the value. As such, you’re more likely to see a longer expiration timeline for appraisals on new construction.
Most lenders will allow you to get appraisal updates to extend the appraisal expiration timeline if you or the other party are unable to close before the appraisal expires. This doesn’t require an additional property inspection and will often just involve the appraiser pulling new comparable sales to confirm or make slight adjustments to the appraised value.
The extension you can get from an appraisal update varies based on your lender and the type of loan, but most will add between 90 and 180 days to how long your appraisal inspection is good for.
Finally, a lender can determine that an appraisal is no longer valid if there’s a major change to the property. That change can be a positive one from a home improvement or a negative one from a natural disaster or vandalism. Anything that has a major impact on an item on the home appraisal checklist can affect the timeline. Major changes can immediately void your home appraisal, regardless of how long ago your local home appraiser completed their report.
In many cases, you can have your appraiser complete an appraisal update, which prevents you from having to pay for an additional appraisal and just involves re-establishing property value based on more recent comparable sales in the area. If you buy a property and then sell it shortly thereafter, you might be able to reuse the original appraisal without an update if you sell quickly, but the timeline depends on the loan type, the lender, the market, and the property condition.
An appraisal update will often extend the life of your appraisal by between four and six months, but it depends on the type of loan and the status of the market in your area. An appraisal update may not be a viable option at all in some cases, and in others, it could add a year to your appraisal expiration timeline.
Most appraisals will be good for a minimum of 30 days. You’ll often only see this short of a timeline in an exceptionally hot real estate market, where values are changing too quickly for appraisers to keep up. More often than not, appraisals in these areas will still be good for 90 to 120 days.
