By now you have pretty much guessed that I’m not very fond of appraisers nor their methods; it’s not exact, it is an “art”, they work for the Lenders and to them they hold true.
True story;
When I was taking my Real Estate licensing course, I was told that appraising was one of the 7 forms of Real estate that I could preform; meaning that as a licensed Realtor I can do appraisals legally (with some obvious exceptions).
Hell, Lenders reach out to us daily wanting us to do BPO’s at a fraction of what it cost them to pay for appraisers on distressed properties…..so it’s not like we don’t know how to do these things.
So it’s frustrating for us who practice Real estate full time to be at the mercy of folks who many times have no clue as to the market that they are appraising.
BTW; the ones who do know the market very RARELY miss the mark.
OK, enough bitching and lets get to the fun stuff.
4th appraisal story; a classic….
Another deal on the table and from the get go, you knew this deal was screwed; the way the agent was working the deal had all the makings of a train wreck waiting to happen.
Over and over again we heard “are you sure this will appraise” and over and over we said beats the hell out of us.
We had comps showing the value but again, we are at the mercy of “Ace”
So here comes Ace, promptly takes measurements/pictures and comes in 80k short.
Agent; “Told you it would not appraise”
Me; “Can I see appraisal?”
Agent; “Why”
Me; “So that you may cancel this contract (and get out of my life, cause we had a back up)”
Agent; “OK, but I told you it would not appraise”
Me; “Yeah, I get it”
Get the appraisal and all of the comps used are REO/Distressed sales even though our listing was not a distressed sale…..but wait it gets better.
Note: Appraisers also use current pending sales and actives to “justify” the guess.
Ace, apparently having way to many BPO’s to do, just gave a quick looksy at these 2 and forgot to mention that the Pending sale that he used had been pending for over 400 days!!!
And the active was not active anymore (been taken off the market for a loan mod).
See we know this cause…..oh yeah we work the market full time.
So me being me, I just had to send this note to Mr. Agent (condensed version)
“Dear Mr. Agent,
Appraisal blows (for the above reason’s) and you might want to look at page 6 of appraisal.”
wait for it…..
Ace’s License was expired!