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What can we do about a bad appraisal?

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purple unicorn

Junior Member
What is the name of your state? ID

We recently purchased a sixplex as an investment. Although the sales contract stipulated the seller was to pay for the appraisal, the lender nonetheless sent the appraisal to bid. They sat on it for weeks waiting for bids forcing us to get an extension from the seller. When they finally did get an acceptable bid in they gave it to the appraiser with not much time to do his appraisal necessitating a second extension. When the appraiser wasn't ready the lender started pressuring him so he got mad and did a very slapdash job. The appraisal amount came in very low, almost $100,000 under the county's assessed valuation. We were informed of the this only 2 days before closing. We had to make a decision, close on the property or give up the property, fearing the seller wouldn't give us another extension. We decided to close even though because of the low appraisal the loan to value ratio was higher allowing the lender to charge a higher interest rate giving us a higher mortgage payment than we had anticipated. The property has tremendous potential both for income and later sale being located close to a downtown area which was the main reason we closed. Even though closing was in early July we didn't actually receive the appraisal until two weeks ago. Everyone who has looked at the appraisal including our mortgage broker and real estate agent thinks it's wrong and has encouraged us to take action. We've been told the lender even knows it's wrong and has blacklisted the appraiser. We've turned the appraisal over to the state board of occupational licensures to see if we have case for having the appraiser's license pulled.

Our main question is what action we can take against the lender and the appraiser. We were injured by the delaying action of the bank and the undervalued appraisal by the appraiser. We've been told the appraiser is the one to go after because the lender probably has a legion of lawyers and they could probably find a way to weasel out of it. To us it's looking like our best bet is getting some sort of settlement from the appraiser if the state board agrees we have a case for pulling his license which we could possibly hold over his head. We've also been told we might not get anywhere with the appraiser either because the appraisal was just simply an opinion and that's not a crime. We know it's best not to go to court if you can avoid it.

Anyway, given all these circumstances what is the best thing to do here? Are there any avenues we haven't thought of that could help us? We don't have a great deal of money left after putting 20% down on the sixplex.
 


Shay-Pari'e

Senior Member
purple unicorn said:
What is the name of your state? ID

We recently purchased a sixplex as an investment. Although the sales contract stipulated the seller was to pay for the appraisal, the lender nonetheless sent the appraisal to bid. They sat on it for weeks waiting for bids forcing us to get an extension from the seller. When they finally did get an acceptable bid in they gave it to the appraiser with not much time to do his appraisal necessitating a second extension. When the appraiser wasn't ready the lender started pressuring him so he got mad and did a very slapdash job. The appraisal amount came in very low, almost $100,000 under the county's assessed valuation. We were informed of the this only 2 days before closing. We had to make a decision, close on the property or give up the property, fearing the seller wouldn't give us another extension. We decided to close even though because of the low appraisal the loan to value ratio was higher allowing the lender to charge a higher interest rate giving us a higher mortgage payment than we had anticipated. The property has tremendous potential both for income and later sale being located close to a downtown area which was the main reason we closed. Even though closing was in early July we didn't actually receive the appraisal until two weeks ago. Everyone who has looked at the appraisal including our mortgage broker and real estate agent thinks it's wrong and has encouraged us to take action. We've been told the lender even knows it's wrong and has blacklisted the appraiser. We've turned the appraisal over to the state board of occupational licensures to see if we have case for having the appraiser's license pulled.

Our main question is what action we can take against the lender and the appraiser. We were injured by the delaying action of the bank and the undervalued appraisal by the appraiser. We've been told the appraiser is the one to go after because the lender probably has a legion of lawyers and they could probably find a way to weasel out of it. To us it's looking like our best bet is getting some sort of settlement from the appraiser if the state board agrees we have a case for pulling his license which we could possibly hold over his head. We've also been told we might not get anywhere with the appraiser either because the appraisal was just simply an opinion and that's not a crime. We know it's best not to go to court if you can avoid it.

Anyway, given all these circumstances what is the best thing to do here? Are there any avenues we haven't thought of that could help us? We don't have a great deal of money left after putting 20% down on the sixplex.
Nothing. You accepted the appraisal, and went forward with the sale.


(QUOTE)The appraisal amount came in very low, almost $100,000 under the county's assessed valuation. We were informed of the this only 2 days before closing. We had to make a decision, close on the property or give up the property, fearing the seller wouldn't give us another extension. We decided to close even though because of the low appraisal the loan to value ratio was higher allowing the lender to charge a higher interest rate giving us a higher mortgage payment than we had anticipated.(QUOTE)

This was not a brite idea.
 

purple unicorn

Junior Member
It seems like we're screwed no matter what happens. If we don't close then we don't get the property and we can't sue anyone because we didn't buy the property and therefore we were not injured. Someone else buys the property which like I said has great potential and turns it into a cash cow. If we do close the we have to accept the bad appraisal along with the higher interest rate and higher mortgage payment. We were backed into a corner because other people didn't do their jobs but regardless of our decision we wind up paying for it and apparently we can't touch anyone. It's just hard to believe we have no recourse in this situation. Does anyone else have any ideas?
 

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