Here is the situation......
I received an order, set up an appt. go out to the property and...... Addition in progress! The lender and the home owner failed to mention this. (FYI this is after a 45 minute drive, and a heck of a time looking up homes of that size in the area)
When I pulled up to the house, you can just see major construction going on. They basically turned the old garage into a great room, added a Den, a 2nd foyer, 2nd bath, laundry room, pantry, a mud room and finally a 4 car garage in the rear (attached). The house's total sq ft is 3445, with about 1500 sq ft being the new addition (w/o the new 4 car attached garage of course).
I immediately contact the lender and explain the situation, and they make it seem like they knew about it and its no big deal (so of course I assume the only logical thing which is the borrower may be getting a home equity type loan for improvements) So I proceed with my work, get back to the office and send them the report with it being "subject to completion". I immediately get a call back from the lender saying what the heck is this? I explain, and they were of course shocked to see all the work being done (I attached about 20 pictures).
The next day, I literally received about 20 phone calls for this property, telling me to take out the "subject to" and make it "AS IS". Of course I refused, so now they want me to remove the great room from the sq ft. FYI, the great room is the only addition to the house that was standing before this started and it is the only part of the addition that is nearly completed (everything else is just 2 X 4's and plywood floors.) I tried to explain that to the wizards working on this poor homeowners loan of 300K+, and they can't seem to understand that this house isn't anywhwere near completion.... it needs about another 40-50k to be finished, and the one part that they don't want me to include in my sketch is the only part that is 99% done!
So.. I wanted to hear how other appraisers would handle this kind of a situation and if you would actually remove the "subject to" and make it "as is" for this lender (JPMorgan Chase).
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