All Forum Posts by: Alex Knott

Hey @Dave S.

Sorry for the delay. It took us 1.5 months from appraisal request to completed valuation. I even switched lenders after a couple weeks of waiting as the first was not staying on top of it. We increased EMD a couple times and provided the seller with evidence of the situation to show that we're committed and communicate that they'd likely run into the same problem with any other buyer unless they had cash offers.

Thankfully, it did go through and closed a couple of weeks ago. My recommendation to anyone would be to add two things:

1) $500+ to your appraisal fee (increase further if still getting rejected). 

2) Pull comparables to make the job easier.

After that it is consistent follow ups with your lender to ensure they're doing whatever they can in outreach and communicating the increased fee for your job. Also ensure your lender is scheduling new appraisers asap if one cancels. Had four or five different appraisers cancel on us until we added in the additional incentive + comps. 

Hey @Jarson Hirko

I get how that'd helping the initial close go through. 

However, between points on the HML and the same obstacle on a bank needing an appraisal for the refinance (vs the original conventional loan), wouldn't that put me back to the same square one scenario but with a high interest loan now attached?

Thanks @Betty Cruz. 

My agent confirmed the same this morning on it needing to be the lenders choice of appraiser. I can also shed some more light here from what he gathered. My agent said it's likely repeatedly falling through since it's a triplex and an appraisers have enough business (like you alluded to with refinances) in today's setting to pick and choose the easier appraisal vs something more difficult like small multi-family.

To solve this he recommended giving an increased appraisal fee to the appraiser to give more motivation to complete our task vs opting for an easier job that pays the same. Also our excellent buyer's agent offered (on his own) to take this fee increase out his own commission to bring the deal across the finish line.

Hope this short thread might help anyone running into a similar issue with 2-4 unit properties!

Hey Shaun,

I have not, I assumed that the lender would need their own choice in appraiser as it's their own underwriting process. Am I able to just google appraisal companies and start calling in?

Or are there lists of appraisers brokers specifically use? I can certainly ask the lender this too.

They are trying to find another appraiser ASAP but I am just concerned that this will repeat itself.

Hey BP, 

I would appreciate advice on getting an appraisal completed for a 2-4 unit multi-family property. So far we have not had any luck with our lender(s) successfully getting past this barrier in the closing process.

As for the details:

I partnered with two friends and we got our first rental property (triplex) under contract at the beginning of August. We have an agent helping us, we had conventional financing approved, our diligence was ran, and the seller agreed to our terms. We were set to close in a little over a month at the beginning of September. 

In mid August, our lender (big name brand bank) tried to get an appraiser out there but could not get an appraisal scheduled. They tentatively scheduled one for a month later but said they were uncertain if it would even occur. We decided to go with a new lender that our agent recommended due to this uncertainty and slightly increased our EMD in exchange for an extended closing date. The new lender was confident in closing at the end of September.

Fast forward to now, the new lender was just notified today that the scheduled appraisal for this week has been cancelled ("for reasons out of their control" was the appraiser's description for cancelling).

At this point my partners and I are confused on what to do and why this keeps occurring. Would love to get advice on how to overcome this hurdle in order to close and to know if anyone else has been running into this issue.

Thank you in advance.