Hello and thanks to all in advance for any input.
We're purchasing a home in Oregon, and were attempting to close on the 29th of this month prior to Labor day.
What part of Oregon?
As Appraisal Management Companies know, turn times in rural Oregon have been running one month out for over a year and a half now. I just spoke with a Portland Realtor who cannot get an appraiser for two weeks. The quoted seven days was unrealistic.
Appraisal Management Companies, supposedly put in place to protect consumers (but really to protect investors of mortgage backed securities) actually add time and expense to the process. Once they get the order an AMC will first try and find an appraiser that they can make the most money off of. Either by sending out spam emails or cold calling appraisers without looking at a map to verify coverage area and local competency. Some AMC's use a bidding system or open by offering insulting fees that were standard 20 years ago, but are far less than what the self employed appraiser needs to cover modern expenses. All of this adds days or WEEKS to the order time. One order of mine was delayed for 20 days because the AMC transposed the borrowers home phone number, the owner never set up voice mail on his cell phone and he thought my emails were spam.
While there are national standards for mortgage reports, each AMC likes to add their own unnecessary and annoying little requirements in order to show the lender that they are earning those extra hundreds of dollars that they are adding to the appraisal cost. No a report does NOT need to show a photo of every smoke alarm in the house!
Once the report is finished the appraiser still has to upload the file to the AMC. Some are painless, while others put the appraiser through an automated checklist making the appraiser answer 20 question before the file is uploaded. The AMC for Wells Fargo makes the appraiser go through this process FOUR TIMES before it is finally accepted by their software, which is why I add a minimum of $100 to all Wells Fargo orders.
Then an actually person gets a crack at the report. The real underwriters are gone, replaced by mindless millennials or recent immigrants neither of which can write a proper sentence in English. Once again to show that they are "adding value" many AMC workers reject EVERY report and ask for some unnecessary minor change. Instead of moving on to the next order, the appraiser then has to drop everything, unlock the file, make the change, explain where and why they made the change, lock and reissue the report which involves more uploading hell.
Then your lender will finally get the report. If they want a change, then the whole process starts again.
After it is all complete on the appraisers end, your loan should close within two weeks and everyone will get paid. Except for the appraiser, of course who they make wait 45 days before mailing a check. I suspect some AMC's or lender send change requests weeks after the report is accepted in order to reset that 45 day stopwatch. On the other hand, I have had lenders call me after 90 days asking for an Appraisal Update because they still have not closed, again I am looking at you Wells Fargo.
Welcome to Oregon and good luck.
