What Is An Appraisal?An appraisal is thought by most consumers to be an exact valuation of the home they are purchasing or refinancing. The reality is that there is no such thing as exactly valuing a home, since a home is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. And since different people are willing to pay different prices, the real value is hard to pin down, or even impossible. Read the rest of this entry »
I blogged just a few days ago about how a client went with an online lender, and that lender sent an appraiser to the client’s home who was not local to the marketplace, and the appraised value ended up coming in low enough that the client had to pay $45,000 out of pocket to pay the loan down. I am not sure how spending $45,000 in cash Read the rest of this entry »
I don’t know how many times I’ll have to say it, “WHEN SHOPPING FOR A MORTGAGE ASK ABOUT THE APPRAISER!” In fact, don’t ask, just read what I have to say first. I have repeatedly said on this blog Read the rest of this entry »
I am working on an interesting loan that will make for a good case study someday, and I think homebuyers and Realtors will find it interesting too.
I am doing a loan for a homebuyer to buy a single family detached home in Falls Church, Virginia. The sales price was a little over $500,000 and the new loan is a Conventional Fixed rate 80% loan-to-value loan, which of course means we are subject to the HVCC rules. So I ordered the appraisal from the bank’s Appraisal Management Company (AMC).
For once, the appraiser was local, from Falls Church, VA so we all figured this appraiser would know the local marketplace and that we would be getting an accurate and fair appraisal. But the appraisal came in several weeks later at a price approximately $35,000 lower than the sales price. The seller was angry, the Realtors were upset, and the buyer was confused. Read the rest of this entry »
