Appraiser blues! Any advice in Chicago market?

[Jeff Terry]

We're selling a home in Chicago and reached a dead end. Here's the situation: 

We sold a home to a very motivated buyer who waived an inspection and was willing to put down a substantial amount of money. The buyer agreed to buy the home at $321k. 

Then the appraiser came in and spent a very short amount of time looking at the home and measuring the exterior. He was there about 19 minutes. He noted very little about the house apart from few stray cats that have nothing to do with the property. 

When the appraisal came in it was for $288k. There were comps that demonstrated our house was priced right and, in fact, even cheaper when you factor in the price per square foot. The lot size is also exceptionally large for a Chicago property. 

We pushed back and the appraiser refused t oadjust even when confronted with the comps. We're at a crossroads here, either walk away from this buyer and relist--hoping the appraisals will catch up with the market demand--or lose thousands and move on. Just a note, there is no need for the current occupant to move out, she doesn't have a new house nailed down yet.

I thought I'd float this to the experts here. 

[Crystal Smith]

Originally posted by @Jeff Terry:

@Crystal Smith thanks for your response! It’s actually a conventional loan. We’re going through the written appraisal and there are many errors (for example it says there’s only one attic with a scuttle entrance when there are two attics and each has pull down stairs). So we’re going to document it all and see what we can do. It’s a shame we have to do this and our listing agent isn’t.

Here's what we do to fight low appraisals. It doesn't always work but.....

• We run our own comparables (We do this anyway)
• We look for mistakes in the current appraisal) It looks like your doing that
• We then generate a letter that goes to the lender (not the appraiser) challenging the appraisal by pointing out the mistakes and providing our own assessment.

Your agent should be working on this with you.