All Forum Posts by: Tom C

John,

Thanks for the great info. I was ready to challenge the appraiser based on where he was coming from, then it turned out that he actually lives in my home town, which is 20 minutes from the property. With that said, he owns investment property 1 hour away, no where near us. His market is nothing like my market. I do not believe he understands how much property values can and do change in my investment area from block to block.

For some reason he went across the main road and found homes for sale and picked those as comps. This area happeneds to be in a war zone all of the homes are $20K or more less then homes in my area. He could have easily found many comparable homes on the subject property block to compare, but he choose to go into the bad parts of the area.

I do know that if this guy every shows up to do another appraisal for me, he wont even have a chance to get out of his car and he better be careful cutting his grass. :)

I would really like to get this appraiser off the market. Most likely he is only in back in business because of this new rule.

Anyone know if there is a board these people report to? He may not have broke any laws, but there sure is a huge conflict of interest here.

I told him, like I always tell the appraiser what I knew the house was worth, nothing new. Would he have given me what I wanted on the house if I would have accepted his $180K 6 plex thats only worth $140K?

AMC = Appraisal Management Company. All lenders who sell to fannie and freddie are now required to use one. Supposedly this is how Congress decided to protect us from ourselves.

Scott,

My broker uses only FlagStar. I do know this much. I am going back to the county with appraisal in hand and telling them to reduce my taxes!!

Who else has had to deal with this new program? Here is my latest experience. I have a SFR, which I purchased for $14K, 15 months ago, it was a REO. I am pulling some cash out and had to have it appraised. My broker had to use an AMC, the AMC called their appraiser in.

I gave the appraiser my rehab list, showing all of the improvements I made to the property since I purchased it. This scumbag came in with an appraisal value of $35K. He used comps in parts of the town that are in a war zone when comps were readily available on my street. I own another home that is very comparable to this home, not 500 ft up the street and it appraised for $64K two years ago.

In our argument to the AMC, I listed nearby comps and listed exactly why his comps were invalid. After a week of the AMC supposedly reviewing the file, they came back with a one paragraph letter from the same appraiser stating that, since I only paid $14K for the house one year ago and did only cosmetic repairs, he could not justify going any higher on the house and that his comps were valid.

If I had been able to call in my investment appraiser, he would have easily appraised this house for $50K. This appraiser should have never taken my purchase price for the home into consideration. The purchase was well over one year.

One side note about this appraiser. While we were walking around the house, he told me that he had a six plex that he wanted to sell. I told him to send me the info and I would run the numbers and perhaps we could come to an arrangement. He sent me the info and after running the numbers, I simply replied to him telling that his price was too high and I could never make it cash flow. This happened before he submitted my appraisal to the AMC.

At this point, is there any other recourse? We are at the mercy of the AMC’s now and whatever lazy dirt bag appraiser they choose, which in most cases is going to be the cheapest.

I have alway wondered.. Who pays the lot rent?

"When seconds count - THE POLICE ARE ONLY MINUTES AWAY"!"

What used to be minutes now turns into many more minutes, because most communitys have had to layoff large segments of their safety forces. In my town, we are down 15 police officers and 11 firemen. Where does that leave the average citizen? To defend themselves and it's not a very good time of year to be unarmed in the middle of the city.

You can get a nice farm house on 25 acres in my part of NE Ohio for $750 month.

$200 bucks, give me a call.. :)

First I would sleep.. Then I would hunt, fish and when I got bored with that, I would figure out what type of business's that are needed to bring my community back and then start those business's.