We are in the process of selling our house. The buyer's lender ordered an appraisal. We live close to a state line and we found out that that appraiser was having a hard time finding comps. My realtor sent him the comps that she used to price the house and he wouldn't consider them as well as the lender also refuted it. Turns out the appraiser doesn't even have access to the MLS (State or county!) that my house is listed in. He has access to the neighboring state, which gives him only a handful of sold homes. He appraised my home based on comps from over a year ago. Obviously the markets is way different now. The price per sqft he appraised my house at is 24k lower than what the buyers offered. Not a single house in my county has sold at that price per sqft in over 6 months. There were also things on the report that were completely wrong, like he said I pay 115/mo for HOA and we don't even have HOA! This obviously broke our contract with the buyer since they were FHA loan. We are putting back on the market but not considering FHA loans to have the opportunity for another appraisal.
How is this even possible? I thought there were regulations for these things. Using comps from over a year ago should be completely forbidden, especially when the market has done a 180. We know that if it comes in low again. We will bit the bullet, but we thought maybe a couple grand low, not 24k! Is what he did even in the guidelines of appraising houses?
Read more: What can be done about a bad appraisal?
