This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 at 1:01 am and is filed under Appraisal, Financing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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March 6, 2007
Buying my first home we found a seller who had recently had an appraisal done. We were excited as we felt that the appraisal was ridiculously conservative.
We made our offer, and found ourself about to close with Countrywide Home Mortgage. As the appraisor who had done the appraisal for the home we were buying was actually on Countrywide’s short list of approved local appraisors, Countrywide agreed to accept the appraisal the seller provided us.
One week to closing, we got a frantic call from Countrywide telling us that they would not be able to offer the loan unless an additional appraisal was done. This caused us great worry, and we found the days counting down to us losing the home because Countrywide was insisting on having an appraisal done.
Finally, 3 days to closing, Countrywide agreed to pay for the appraisal themselves (after hours of painful phone arguments). Much to our surprise, the appraiser they hired never even bothered coming to the property, and provided us with a worthless appraisal. As our appraisal had been done just a few weeks earlier, we had asked the appraiser which Countrywide had insisted upon to at least charge us a fair appraisal fee (Going rate for an appraisal was $250 at the time (this was before Countrywide agreed to pay). He had asked us to fax the original appraisal, then replied that there was nothing he could do as far as reducing his fee.
After closing, we managed to get a copy of the appraisal he had done. It was a carbon copy of the appraisal we had faxed him…
He clearly earned that $500.
read comments (2)
March 13th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
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June 27th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
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