Well this morning I was not planning on going to work. I was carefully and thoughtfully taking the ornaments off my tree and packing them away for another year. Of course the phone would ring. It was one of my agents and she was just a little bit upset. Seems we'd been emailed a copy of a recent complete appraisal done by again an out of area appraiser (he's 2 1/2 hours away) who knew little of our area and well just didn't seem to give a s*&# about our deal.
Granted, this property is unique, it is a 1 Bedroom, 1 Bath cottage. It sits on a acre, has deeded access to a 7 acre lake lot with boat ramp, dock, picnic tables.. giving the owner access to beautiful 15,000+ acre Lake Sinclair. There are two
storage building, an RV shelter with hookups, a covered front porch, a large screened porch on the back. It has a beautiful stone fireplace in the living room. It's really just charming.
The appraiser did not go into the house. The appraiser used some of MY photos on his appraisal from the MLS. The appraiser obviously did NOT think a chimney means a house has a fireplace. Ah and the comps. One of them was recently comprised by again the government ... in loosing part of the property for a highway to be widened. Another he 
used the wrong city and milage from the subject he said it was in the same county and 4 miles away and it's actually in another county and 25 miles away... oh and it was an REO with two gaping holes in the roof that had been rained into for months and months (and we had record for my lifetime rainfall this year). Another of the comps is in town on a lot the size of a postage stamp, also a REO with plywood over the huge holes in the floor that allowed you to see the crawl space and don't let me forget to mention neither of those comps had ANY appliances. And then there
was the manufactured home comp... wrong sq. ft., wrong acreage and did I mention it was a MANUFACTURED HOME.
This house is listed for $69,900. I'm not at liberty to compromise my seller's position and tell you the amount we had it under contract, but I thought the buyer was getting a good deal. I'm also not going to tell you the actual amount of the appraisal, but I will say and many of you will gasp, I'm sure, it was $32,000. less than the contract price.
Today I had to alternate coffee and alka seltzer all day. I just could not believe my eyes when I saw the appraisal.
Oh and did I mention that this appraiser did NOT have access to our local MLS. And did I forget to mention that he called me and asked me to email him comps? Did I mention that I did email him comps? Did I mention he didn't use any of the comps that I emailed to him? Did I mention that I had a local appraiser look at this appraisal today and just shake his head and be speechless?
So is this sad story that hurt my seller, a buyer enough to make you go and sign the petition to repeal HVCC then I don't know what would be.
You can sign the peition here. Join the over 118,000 people who have already signed this.
There was legislation in the Senate committee to repeal HVCC, but it seems to have died. Let your Senators and representative know how much this is hurting our industry.
By the way you do not have to be a real estate agent, broker or really involved in this industry at all to be hurt by HVCC that does not allow mortgage brokers to order appraisals from area appropriate appraisers. Just think about yourself being in the position of my seller, who had a buyer willing to pay X for his home, he was willing to sell it for X and some appraiser not at all familiar with this area appraised it for:
X minus $32,000 = NO SALE.
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