Clean and in good repair, with the yard tidy as well.

We also did FSBO and got hosed on the appraisal. The appraiser used a comp from 10/2013 that pretty much sunk us. Our house appraised at 25k under the selling price. I fought with the bank and provided good and more recent comps but they wouldn't budge. Our town has very little inventory. In hindsight I would have met with the appraiser myself (my husband was here) and I would have handed him comps to use. We still ended up with a deal above the appraisal but we are taking a bath in a good market.

Louislinus-- I had read some of your posts and I'm hoping we don't have the same problem :/. I have word of mouth selling prices of the two houses near me that just sold a few months ago, but I'm not sure how to get the final official price. Maybe I can talk our agent for us as buyers into getting them for me.

Or just pull them off of Zillow or the tax auditor's website. I would strongly recommend you give the appraiser comps. My buyers agent REA said that she would have with the appraiser and done that if we had used her.

Zillow for our area doesn't gave sold prices, annoyingly. I'll have to check the auditor's site. They're very recent sales so I'm hoping I can get them.

Zillow will give you the sale price too.

Definitely provide comps for the appraiser. Otherwise he/she could pull ones that appear on paper to be comps but due to things you know about the neighborhood they're in, might not be.

I think appraisers have access to the MLS, so they can get the sale prices. If you can't find them on public sites (zillow is inaccurate in our area), you can provide addresses and the appraiser can look them up.

+1 on providing comps. Whenever we get appraised, I give the appraiser a one-page info sheet on the house that includes any recent improvements or unique features of the house and then six comps that are as strong as I can find. They are supposed to find them within a mile of your home (sometimes farther in rural areas) and ideally within the last six months, though recent comps will be weighted more heavily. Look for everything that sold during that time, and if there's something that looks on paper like a good comp that you know is not, also list that and explain why it is not a comp for your house (e.g., if a gut fixer sells and your house is move-in ready, underscore that difference; if you know a house has some issue that would discourage buyers, note that).

In our area, appraisers do have access to the MLS and will pull all notes on a comp and do a drive-by. Our last appraisal also used two supplementary comps that were in escrow where the listing agents confirmed for the appraiser that they would close for at least list price, although I think this is unusual (first time it had ever happened for us in four appraisals). So it could be worth at least looking at what's pending, if anything, and what it listed for/how long it was on the market before going into escrow. Good luck!!

Artemis--thanks, that's really helpful especially about the pending listings. I think these are great ideas!

The other big mistake I made was I stopped showing my house once we were under contract. I had no less than 5 people contact me who wanted to look at our home and I told them no. This was a very costly mistake. If I had continued to show the house and had gotten a back up offer, when that appraisal came in so low, I think I could have pulled out of the deal, taken the back up offer and gone with a buyer with a different lender and appraisal.

Keep showing your house!!!