Appraiser Frustrations!

[Jimmy Watson]

Hello all.  This is more of a venting post than anything else.  But, feel free to respond with your thoughts on the fees and turnaround times you have seen lately.

On 5/4 I scheduled an appraisal for 5/10 for a buy and hold in Dallas.  The appraisal management company, Accurate Group, didn't waist any time to charge me $725 on the 4th.  Time goes by and I haven't heard anything.

On the 11th I call up my finance guy and quickly he gets them to send an email stating that the Appraiser would be contacting me to schedule withing 24 hours.  I wait until the end of biz the next day to call the Appraiser, he said it would be a few days before he would call me.  I do my best to be patient.  

On the 19th I call the Appraiser again.  I gave him info on the rehab and corrected some info on the property that he was given by Accurate Group.  Not wanting to delay things any further, I also gave him the tenant's contact info.  

He finally does the site inspection on the 21st.  

No news, so on the 25th I called and left a vm hoping to check on it and to let him know about a house a few doors down that just closed earlier that day that is a great comp.  It's now the 2nd of June, guess what we have...not a D@#% THING!!! 

I understand that Appraisers are in busy right now, I get that.  Two, three weeks tops.  My finance guy pre-authorized $600 for the appraisal, I felt that was on the high end. I didn't even get a call to confirm that $725 was OK, they just ran the credit card.  $725 and a month later, it's about to drive me nuts! 

Not to mention the hardmoney clock is ticking and my finance guy has had everything they have needed for a while now...just waiting on the appraiser.

What happened to the project management triangle of cost, quality, and speed?  Pick two they say, the cost and speed has been awful.   This appraisal better be really good, so good that I frame each page of it and hang on my office wall kinda good!