VA loan appraisal guidelines

[Ken Badziak]

Neither myself nor my mortgage broker (with a decade of experience) have come across this issue, so I was hoping someone who actually appraises for the VA can chime in.

I'm using a VA loan to purchase my primary residence. Based off of local market knowledge and recent comps of the exact same model town home on the same street within the past six months, I know that the value of the town home I'm looking to purchase is "X", which is the same number that's on the contract.

The VA appraiser came out, did his thing, then left. A week later I had the appraisal.

He came in at "X-$25k", which is way way below the true value of the property. One reason was the comps he used; while I'm purchasing a 2 story 3/2.5 with a one car garage, the comps he used were all single story 3/2's with no garage.

When asked why he didn't use the comps for the same model houses that sold down the street, the response was that they "didn't sell through the MLS, so he had no way to determine seller discounts, terms of the loan" etc etc etc.

My mortgage broker is interacting with this, and we might have made some headway, but in the meanwhile, I wanted to get the opinions of those on this board and determine if it is indeed in the VA guidelines to use only properties sold through the MLS as comps?