Legal Question: Mortgage lender changed valuation of appraisal

[Matt Mach]

So I've purchased 8 houses (both as a primary and investments) over the last 10 years or so and have never come across this issue when buying or selling my properties...

I recently had a deal fall through for a single family house that I was purchasing for my new primary residence in MA. I was the RE agent on deal and decided to pick the best rate of for mortgage off bankrate. The bank I picked kept jumbo, 20% down loans in house and you could bring down the APR by depositing money into their savings account which made perfect financial sense to me.

Long story short, a week before financing commitment I get call that the appraisal they ordered, and I paid for, came back with a number of $650,000 (my offer price) but after "internal review" the appraised number was $600,000 and they would only lend on that number. I asked for an appeal and found 8 more properties that supported the price of the house I was trying to buy and after a week the bank basically said they are holding firm. I have no idea what happened during the appeal.

So my question is, the bank is not local to MA and the appraiser that did the review for the bank is only licensed in CA as far as I can find, is this even legal? If I had known that they would just make up a number and reply to the appraisal with random comps from the other side of the country I would have never went with this bank. I even went back and checked the documents I signed and the only mention I can find is from the preliminary commitment that says something to the affect of "the appraisal must meet our standards".

I at the very least want my money back for the appraisal they didn't use but I really feel like I'm entitled to everything I spent up to this point because THEY are the ones that killed the deal. Any help is appreciated.