an appraiser or not an appraiser that is the question?

[pat davis]

:evil: Our house was appraised by a company out of Miami, he came and did the appraisal which came in at 180,000.00. I tried to express to the loan company that our house wasn't worth that, tops 160,000.00. When we got our copy to the appraisal one of the houses that they used as a compairison was right across the street from us but used a different address. We got our loan at 141,000.00 that was in late Jan. 2001. then they came back in June and flipped our loan and used the same appraisal only upped it to 181,000.00 charged me 100.00 for this. Only dropped my intrest by a fraction on this loan and went up to 171,000.00.
The guy that did our appraisal signed it and had a supervisor signed it also. I have sence learned that the original guy is in trouble with the state and the supervisor lost a bunch of clients and money buy this guy. Both the appraiser and the loan co. have us burried in this loan and no way to get out of it.
What can I do or what do I need to do about this appraiser and the supervisor? I have been told to turn them into the banking commission. I have filed a complaint with the State Attorney's office on the loan company for prediatory lending practice's. The loan company found out today that they are going to be up that famous creek with out a paddle if we default on this loan.
I need you imput on this if you can
Thanks
Pat

 

[xmrdfghap]

I truely sympathize with your plight. but at what point do you accept responsibility for what has happened? Perhaps the appraiser and the loan officer was unethical.....but that was not the only appraiser in the area was it? Could you not, having refied and cashed out some $30,000 to $50,000, spent $300 and got an independent appraisal? And at what point did someone force you to sign the loan papers? If you KNEW the house was worth $160,000 tops, and you knew you might have trouble paying for $141,000, why did you accept a note of $141,000 and then to compound it, why did you go back and sign for another $30,000? Even if it cost you only $100.00 you knew you had to pay back all the rest of the money, didn't you?

On a pragmatic note, I think I would take the money, let them have the house, use the $30,000 extra you got, buy another house in the $140,000 range and when the bank comes after you declare bankruptcy......do this properly and it can become a good second income for you.....and if you maintain a relationship with that loan officer it could becfome a career.

 

[wyecoyote]

Pat,

I tend to agree with Goodpasture on this one. If you knew that your house was worth $160K tops then why accept the loan for $171K. You state that your orignal was for $141K where did the $30K go? You could have walked at any time on the loan process. If you know that you had problems paying back $141K why go up? It sounds like you have reported this to alot of people but now is where you must decide do you step up to the plate and pay the loan or walk away from the house. The only advice I have is pay the loan don't refi any more do not accumulate any more debt (rip up all credit cards) and live there for another 30 years until the loan is paid.

Ryan

 

[Ross (CO)]

Pat, .... you are one among many who have come to the Forum and shared about a similar demise now reaching a critical state. The last I recall was a man from midwestern state. It appears that he will have to accept the 30-year sentence he agreed to and remain incarcerated in his home for a long time. I am intigued by the start of your second sentence, saying, "I tried to express to the loan company...." That's where you lost me. Just how hard did you try ? What exactly did you insist they do to assuage your dire concerns ? What so many borrowers fail to do or are flat-out denied of being afforded is their chance to look over the appraisal report that supports their loan.....BEFORE they sit down at the closing table. That could merely be an hour before they close. No one gets that copy till AFTER the loan is closed. To your surprise you see this comparable house across the street from you ...but a different address. Do you mean they simply inserted that home's photo there, but then used all accompanying data of another property ? Have you noted the sale date and sale price of that other property and asked your county or local MLS to research which property transacted to match those two pieces of data. Date and price are benchmark numbers to confirm. Or was this other comparable completely fabricated ? As soon as you saw that discrepancy, and knew in your heart that something was wrong, you should have started your investigation. (Perhaps you have just learned this !) You already knew that $160K was a market value which more-appropriately would compliment your home. If you were shown your appraisal BEFORE the closing you could have and would have (right ?) walked away from the closing table. --- As for being up the proverbial creek, you are no where there, nor are "they". You have a roof over your head and a monthly mortgage agreement to keep and it's really no big deal. Why would you want to default on the loan ? Don't. You are paying less per month now than before, yes ? Keep your contracted agreement and plan to sell around the year 2031 or 2032. The market will have surely gone way up and you will sell at a major gain. Pat, the rest of us see this stuff every single day. We report what needs to be reported, to protect persons like yourself and your neighbors, and then we get slammed for rendering the very opinion we were asked to provide. To that I ask, why ? Can you offer any answer which helps us understand why this is so ?

 

[Farm Gal]

Sir or Madam:

To the above I can only add this:
Were the appraisal to have come in $30,000 BELOW what you thought you home was worth, and you really really wanted that loan, would you not have bestirred yourself on your own behalf to prove to YOUR satisfaction that your personall estimate of value was correct?

Like the above, I must question your wisdom in permitting a problem which you knew about occurr.

I also believe your options are few: bite the bullet and pay the bills, or move. You may also want to shout from the rooftops that there needs to be better oversight of mortgage brokers and lenders to prevent other folks from falling into the same trap: what we in our profession call "Lender Pressure" is the primary cause of exactly what you describe! May I ask: have you figured out how much the lenders made in fees on those two loans you took out?

Does it make sense to YOU that the folks helping to releive you of that money should be the ones selecting which appraisers estimate the value on your property? Do you think they might have an interest in insureing the deal closes NO MATTER WHAT and perhaps insure that real, honest, appraisers do not get involved?

I can assure you that had you sought out a competent impartial appraiser and then LISTENED instead of heaping abuse on their resultant value, your situation today would have been significantly brighter.

Good luck in resolving your issue.

Sign me a competent appraiser who gets less work than some 'make the number' folks in my area.

 

[pat davis]

I am here to clear up some issues and answer the questions that you put to me, here goes.
1. Goodpasture
I or we have always accepted the responsibilities of our actions. No there were and are many appraiser's in the state of Florida. First of what money that we received is not the issue and second they told us that they had there own appraiser's that their company had to use. I know for a fact that even banks or mortgage companies only use certain ones so with that being said it didn't put any bells clanging, nor would it any one else. I or we have never had trouble paying for the mortgageor the rest of our bills.
pay back what rest of the money? there wasn't any rest of the money. They paid off the existing mortgage and then paid off a credit card get my dirft. We only ended up if I remember correctly with about 800.00 in ore pocket. We have declared bankruptcy both a 7 and a 13 and all is behind us and we have crawled out and have what we thought good credit until this lender told us we were on the low side. But of couse we didn't get to see any of that. As far as what you are suggesting I really feel it is in bad taste to even think that.

2. Ryan:
They ask me what I thought our value on the house was and I told them tops 160k. When they called us to tell us that it came in at 180k. I ask how and the answer was because the market values in our area were high. Not being an appraiser we accepted there answer and I beliveve any one else would have also. Again no bells went clanging. The reason it went from 141k to 171k was to bring the intrest down so they said. Again they had to pay off the existing mortgage with all of the intrest of 14.495% and it brought it down to 14.050% on the second loan which we didn't know anything on either loan until we closed and they sent in the closers to our house. I had to make several calls to get the papers sent to us. On the 2nd. loan finally we got the papers for both of the loans and that is when we got the appraisal and I went over it. The next day I called and was told
that this is the way they had to do it in order to get the loan through because there company had never done a loan with 2 banckruptcies before.
Let me make my self very clear we don't walk away from our responsibilities. The whole point of me putting this up on the board was to get information on how or who I needed to contact to report this appraiser. I guess that is my fault I wasn't very clear on what I wanted because I was trying to give you back ground of what was going on.

 

[wyecoyote]

Pat,

Good of you to come back in here and better explain your case. First and fore most continue to pay the mortgage so you don't lose the house and are out on the street. You state that you have reported all this to the state banking commision and AG. The only other suggestion is to turn the appraisal into the Florida state appraisal board. You may want to talk to some of the appraisers here on this board that are located in Florida to see how to go about filling a complaint with the Florida state appraisal board.

If your not shirking your responsibility of repaying the debt then your better than some homeowners who have come in here and asked questions in the past. I would only suggest don't take any more loans no matter how promising they make them sound until the bankrupcies have cleared which takes 10 years I belive. Then and only then go to a local bank to get a lower interest rate if, they are indeed lower than what you have currently. For your own information you may want to annually check your credit and credit score with one of the credit reporting agencies like equifax.

Ryan

 

[pat davis]

3. Ross:
Ross I called and told them several times and I would ask them to explain it to me again, then the branch manager got on the phone and that is when he said the market values where up in our area and that is how this appraisal came in that much. I wanted another appraisal just to make sure, I didn't want to get screwed by them over evaluating the property but when I was told this I was stopped dead in my tracks. As I stated to Ryan we didn't even get any papers until about a month and a half after signing for the second load and I had to go to the exent to threating them with an atty. and they sent in copies of both loans but only the 1st. appraisal I didn't get the second one until yesterday and the loan company faxed it to me and it is so bad you can't really read it.
Yes they put the picture on another address. And again yes they used the data to some one elses house, who's I don't know. No I haven't done that yet but it is now on my list to do. Along with writing out complaint forms to the State Attny's office and the Banking Commission's office.
I did start to some extent but it really got started when all of the instrest rates started falling so low that I called the loan co. to see if we could refi like they said they would do because we would have had a enough payment history with the co. to be able to get a much lower intrest rate than we had and was told that they couldn't do any thing for us for 4 yrs. at this point I started looking for another mortgage and found out even more that we didn't read and weren't told about is that we had a 6 mo. prepayment pentalty on this loan. We also found out that we had good credit and that the loan co. was a subprime lender and it just keeps getting worse. We found another lender and we were approved with a Fannie Mae at a rate of 6.25% but had to appraise out at over 200k there was no way. I have been hot and heavy on this sence the Fed intrest rates dropped so low, on the computer finding out what ever I can on this predatory lending and what I am finding out will blow your mind as it did mine. Yes we would have walked away from it because we lost an 8.5% intrest and what money we had in it and went up to a 14.495% and then to a 14.050%. What can I say we were scammed flammed and tattooed.
My husband retired from his job at the end of Oct. 2001 after 27 years to go into business with his brother-in-law's in his constrution business. He also needed money so he was loaned 30k (401k retirement) he worked from Nov. 1 to May 30 and the company closed we were susposed to get paid until he started with this other company but that didn't happen either so we went from june until the 3rd. week of July with no money coming in and I've kept things going until now and I am 26 days late with the house payment I've called and they were going to furlow our Aug. and Sept. because we were such good customers then they called yesterday and demanded there money so I am scrambling to get it. Now to put the frosting on the cake we have no health ins. so we have to go into the mini cobra which is going to cost us 1134.60 per month. Before we were paying 1842.14 now we are paying 2,032.90 now you figure this out. We will find the money and I will keep paying on this as before but I will keep going also in this predatory lending also. It has gotten into my blood and I can't quite know. The thing that hurts the most is the way were taken and didn't even know we were being taken. I hope that has answered all of your questions and that you all understand where I am coming from also. I just want to know where I can go to turn this guy in. He doesn't need to be out there doing this to other people period.

 

[pat davis]

Lee Ann:
To answer your question no. Let me explain, when we bought this house in 98 it appraised at only 110k. This is what we bought it for. Now we have inclosed the 528 sq. ft. lanai and put in central heat and air. we have replaced the old broken down fence and spent over 2,000. fixing up the out side landscaping painting replacing the grage door and front door, replaced our bath vanity and sink and ceramic tile floor. New ac unit for the rest of the house and also laid pavers for a small deck for our table and chairs by the pool that is how I arrived at my top figure.
I am not understanding your question in permitting a problem which you knew about occurr. Please explain this furthur.
The answer to your question how much did they make off of me NO I am really scared to see that because it would just make matters worse.
Yes I do feel that what you said about honest appraisers not getting involved is very true. I am just getting into the appraiser side of this and that is how I found this board and have been reading the posts so I thought I would post to see if I could find out information on how to get into the right place to do a formal complaint on this appaiser and the supervisor, I feel if he signed off on this he should have at least looked at the paper work before he signed his name, which I have found out by talking to him that he didn't even see it so he says. But I didn't even trust a thing he said either. He is just as big of a con artist as the rest of them.

 

[Pamela Crowley (Florida)]

Pat,

Here is the link for downloading the complaint form:

http://www.myflorida.com

on the right side, click on:

Business and Professional Licenses

click on OK to view over a secure connection.

on the left side, click on:

File a Complaint

at the bottom of this page there is a place for you to select a profession to file the complaint about - choose Real Estate and click on continue.

Print the form, fill it in and send it in.

If you need help, please contact me via my email button on this post and I will do everything I can to help you fill it in correctly, include all pertinent copies and expedite this for you.

I would like to see any appraiser that would do this taken out of this profession and hopefully do some jail time. I would also like to see your loan officer and that mortgage broker put in jail. Florida Division of Real Estate has a 'slush fund' where you could receive up to $25,000 for being a victim of a licensed real estate professional's unethical or illegal behavior. I believe you would need to win a civil suit first but I'm not sure about this.

Looking forward to hearing from you.