Well, your property taxes might go up if you have the house reappraised, might'nt they?

Is there any point to having it appraised again?

It might help get a home equity loan, should you want one. But it doesn't sound like it's needed, and in my experience they'll generally take your word re: the home's value.

Mostly it would just make you feel good to have a hard number when thinking about your equity. But it could be a false feeling, given the "bubble".

I hadn't thought of property taxes but what about for insurance purposes?

I'd only bother with it if you needed to borrow money to do something. We did that to be able to load money for our kitchen when our renovation-fund ran out. We bought a fixer-upper though, and really needed that kitchen.

load, loan. tom-a-to tom-ah-to.

Property taxes go up when the house is assessed, not appraised.

your property taxes might go up if you have the house reappraised

an appraisal is a service you pay for. you pay for it and you own it. it is a violation of appraiser ethics to share the appraisal with anybody but the client. your taxes can (and will) go up over time with or without you commissioning an appraisal, but the assessor will only see the appraisal if you hand it to him/her.

Thanks for setting me straight. I don't own a house, but the old people I know are always complaining about some word that starts with an a.

You don't need to have an "official" appraisal to insure your house - the insurance company will make an assessment of value if you make a claim anyway.

One thing you can do with all that spare value you have in your house is to use the equity to borrow against to buy investment property - to the finance providers, it's as good as cash in the bank. You can take the value of your home, subtract the value of your mortgage, add that to the cost of the property you wish to buy and that can make the percentage of the finance you are seeking in relation to the value of the investment property an acceptable risk in the eyes of finance providers. In Australia, if you can make your total mortgage debt less than 80% of your total real estate assets, you will have lenders falling all over themselves to give you money.

As said above: no real need to do it unless you want more money or are going to sell. And what quonsar said - the appraisal belongs to you. Taxes assessors do their own assessing.

I used to be a mortgage underwriter.