After some significant freaking out - seeing as an appraisal that low would essentially make our obtaining a mortgage impossible, not to mention undervaluing our house and land to the point where we'd have essentially lost all of the money we invested in the property ourselves - we examined the appraisal more closely. The way an appraisal is calculated is by closely examining the house and property, then comparing it to the selling price of other similar houses and properties in the area. To this guy's credit, we have a pretty unique situation here, in that our neighborhood is rural (everyone lives on 5 - 10 acres) but still within the limits of a fairly sizable city. None of the houses around us have recently sold and there's not much else like it around. Finding comparables (as they're called) was likely difficult. Unfortunately, the comparables he ended up choosing were not comparable in any true sense. None were within our city, none had as large a property, and, most outrageously, two were sold in unusual circumstances (one was a short sale and one a relocation sale). If Tres could find this information in under an hour, how had it escaped the appraiser's attention? It all seemed pretty strange. Tres collected all of this information, as well as finding some other comparables that seemed more reasonable to us, and typed them up as a rebuttal, to be submitted to the appraiser and the bank. The appraiser refused to reconsider, even after Tres called to tell him he would be filing a formal complaint with the licensing board.
At this point, we weren't quite sure what we should do. We were pretty sure the appraisal was ridiculously low, but our confidence was a bit shaken. Should we simply order another appraisal? What if it came in low too? Were there options available to us if our house was really worth that much less than originally thought? What were our alternatives? Would we lose the house? We discussed some options with our broker and even met with some other banks, but it was hard to get our hopes up. Ultimately, we decided we would order another appraisal and go from there. The appraiser came out two weeks ago and we waited with bated breath. I am happy to say that we got a call a week or so later that his appraisal came in at $8,000 over our original (construction loan) appraisal, which is to say more than high enough to qualify us for our mortgage and finish up this whole silly process. To say that we were happy about this news is a significant understatement. I would like to kiss that appraiser. Really. So, while I think we are right in claiming the first appraiser negligent (he clearly chose properties that low-balled our property, for reasons that I can't understand), this process also illustrates how unscientific the art of appraisal can be. All I can say, is that I'm glad we came out on the right side of it in the end.
And now, for a bit of levity, here's 8 months pregnant me (this was a few weeks ago - I'm now almost 38 weeks, so getting close!) with a giant watermelon from the garden; I'm not quite the biggest thing around here!
I know some of you will maintain that I
often make this face in pictures but, in
my defense, this was about the 6th shot
he'd taken and that watermelon was heavy!
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