Keep in mind that the Buyer's lender, 9 out of 10 times, will require their own independent appraisal (which you also pay for). However, it can be beneficial to have your own pre-listing appraisal performed. During the crazy real estate market during and right after COVID, many lenders didn't require their own appraisal but for the most part things are back to normal in many regards. Realtors perform a CMA (Comparative Market Analysis) when pricing your home. We make price adjustment using data of other similar properties within your neighborhood or community. Based off the features of your home, we compare them and make plus and minus adjustments of value based on those features and how they are better, worse or indifferent to the other properties. Some of the many features include sqft, number of bedrooms and baths, upgrades, condition neighborhood, etc...
An appraiser will use very similar tools but their numbers and adjustments will be a little more fine tuned and the price range of your home will probably be a little more exact. Some Realtors in hopes of willing the listing will give you an inflated value, sometimes because they have an idea of what "you" think it's worth, in order to hopefully win the listing over another agent. With that highly inflated value, it may cause your property to sit on the market much longer than other properties and ultimately cause you to sell the home at the more accurate price it should have been listed in the first place or even a lower price because now Buyers are concerned that something could be wrong with the property because of the big reduction and number of days on the market. In addition, a typical Buyer will only be able to get a mortgage based on the appraisal price so if the appraisal price is lower than the contract price, then there would have to be some negotiations or the Buyer might have to back out of the deal. Doing an pre-appraisal can sometimes give the Seller a little more peace of mind knowing an independent unbiased price has been determined by a professional appraiser, especially when dealing with a niche type of property.
