The fastest way to find the last appraisal of a house is to open your closing packet from the most recent purchase or refinance. Lenders are required by federal law to give borrowers a copy of every appraisal developed for a first-lien home loan, so the report is almost always sitting in the folder (paper or digital) you received at closing. If it isn’t there, your mortgage lender, your real estate agent, and in some cases the appraiser can still produce a copy.
Start With Your Closing Documents
Pull the folder you got from the title company or settlement attorney when you bought or refinanced the home. The appraisal is usually filed as a Uniform Residential Appraisal Report, known in the industry as Fannie Mae Form 1004, the standard form for one-unit properties.1Fannie Mae. Appraisal Report Forms and Exhibits The report contains the appraiser’s final opinion of value, a description of the home’s interior and exterior, and the comparable sales used to reach the number.2Fannie Mae Single Family. Uniform Residential Appraisal Report
If your closing documents were delivered electronically, search your email and cloud storage for “appraisal,” “Form 1004,” or the property address. Many title companies now send the whole closing package as a single PDF, so the report may already be on your computer under a filename you forgot.
Request a Copy From Your Mortgage Lender
If your own files come up empty, go to the lender that issued your mortgage. Under Regulation B, a creditor must provide the applicant with a copy of every appraisal or other written valuation developed for a loan application secured by a first lien on a dwelling.3eCFR. 12 CFR 1002.14 – Rules on Providing Appraisals and Other Valuations The copy must be sent promptly after the appraisal is completed, or at least three business days before closing, whichever comes first, and the right applies whether the loan was approved, denied, or withdrawn.4Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Comment for 1002.14 – Rules on Providing Appraisals and Valuations
That right covers first-lien loans on a dwelling. For a second mortgage or home equity line of credit, the lender may still have the appraisal on file, but federal law does not guarantee you a copy on the same terms.
Lenders are separately required to retain closing disclosures and related loan documents for at least five years after consummation.5eCFR. 12 CFR 1026.25 – Record Retention If your loan closed within that window, the servicer should be able to pull the appraisal from its file. Call the number on your mortgage statement, ask for a copy from your loan file, and expect the request to be free in most cases.
Contact Your Real Estate Agent or Brokerage
The agent or brokerage that handled your last purchase may still have the transaction file, which typically includes the appraisal. State rules generally require brokerages to keep transaction records for several years after closing, commonly three to seven years depending on the state, so a call or email to the office can often produce the document if your purchase falls inside that window.
Agents can also pull historical listing data from the Multiple Listing Service, which may include the recorded sale price and property details even when the appraisal itself is not stored there. That won’t replace the appraisal report, but it gives you a reference point for what the home sold for at the time.
Public Records and Online Estimates Are Not the Same Thing
If you only need a rough value and can’t locate the actual report, two free sources are close at hand, with important caveats.
Your county assessor publishes a property valuation used to calculate property taxes. You can usually look it up on the county website by address or parcel number. The number is not a market appraisal. Many jurisdictions apply an assessment ratio, a percentage of estimated market value, to arrive at the taxable figure, and that ratio varies widely by location. A home the county lists at $200,000 for tax purposes can have a market value considerably higher. Treat the assessed value as a trend indicator, not a substitute for a professional appraisal.
Websites like Zillow, Redfin, and Realtor.com generate automated valuation model (AVM) estimates from public records and recent sales. An AVM cannot inspect the inside of a home, so it misses renovations, deferred maintenance, and condition issues that move value in either direction. Public-record errors, like wrong square footage, and comparable sales pulled from a nearby but different neighborhood can throw the number off further. For a mortgage, tax appeal, legal proceeding, or estate settlement, an AVM estimate will not meet the requirement.
When an Old Appraisal Won’t Do the Job
Finding your last appraisal is one thing; using it is another. For a new conventional loan, Fannie Mae requires the property to be appraised within 12 months of the note date. Between four and twelve months old, the lender can order an appraisal update rather than a full new report; past 12 months, a new appraisal is required.6Fannie Mae. Appraisal Age and Use Requirements FHA-insured loans use a 180-day validity period from the effective date, extendable to one year with an update.7HUD. FHA Implements Revised Appraisal Validity Period Guidance Outside lending, there is no universal expiration rule, but courts and attorneys generally expect a valuation based on recent comparable sales, so a report more than a year or two old may carry little weight in a tax appeal, insurance claim, or divorce.
Appraisals Tied to a Past Date
Sometimes the value you need is tied to a specific earlier date rather than today. This comes up most often after a death, when the estate must report the home’s fair market value as of the date of death. Federal estate tax law uses date-of-death value as the default for determining what belongs in the gross estate.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 2031 – Definition of Gross Estate The executor can instead elect to value assets six months after the date of death, but only if doing so reduces both the estate’s total value and the tax owed.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 2032 – Alternate Valuation
To establish value as of a past date, you hire an appraiser to perform a retrospective appraisal. The appraiser researches comparable sales and market conditions from the target date and issues a report with that historical effective date. The same approach is used in divorce proceedings, partnership dissolutions, and insurance disputes where the relevant value is tied to a specific moment in time.
Ordering a New Appraisal
When the previous report is lost, outdated, or never existed, a new one from a licensed appraiser gives you a defensible valuation. The Appraisal Institute’s online directory lists designated members and candidates nationwide,10Appraisal Institute. Find An Appraiser and your state’s appraiser licensing board website lets you verify that a specific person holds a current license.
During the inspection, the appraiser walks the interior and exterior, measures the living area, and notes condition, layout, and upgrades such as a new roof or renovated kitchen. The report compares the property against recent comparable sales, with Fannie Mae guidelines calling for sales within the past 12 months and a preference for the most recent and most similar transactions.11Fannie Mae. Comparable Sales
Fees for a standard single-family home appraisal generally run from $300 to $600, with complex properties, rural locations, and high-cost markets pushing higher. Expect one to two weeks from scheduling to a finished report. Appraisers are required to retain the workfile for at least five years, so if you later lose your copy within that window you can usually request a duplicate directly from the appraiser, provided you were the client or an authorized intended user of the original report.