Refi Appraisal for home came in shockingly low - 100K under what we expected

[Anonymous]

Any advice, or referrals to good mortgage brokers, agents, any one who might have insight on a bad appraisal situation?

My house is tiny, close in Capitol Hill, but newly renovated and pretty slick for petite place. Two blocks south, similar houses (300 sq ft bigger) have sold recently in the 510k to 625k region, the appraisal came in at 370k. The appraiser (from VA suburbs) used comps on the other side of H street, and waaaay far out Capitol Hill, instead of more recent sales closer by.

Arrggg....! Any insight, suggestions on appeal? Can anyone recommend a local mortgage person familiar with CH? Anyone have the same experience?

TIA!

[Anonymous]

Contest it. Provide the appraiser with a list of more reasonable comps, if you feel he was off. That's what we did (not on CH though) and they came up about $40k.

[Anonymous]

I'm sorry. Yes, I would contest it and provide the comps. We also provided three recent comps to our appraiser and he used the first one almost down to the penny. Our real estate agent prepared a little report but you could easily do it yourself. We also provided a list of improvements we had made.

[Anonymous]

Whoa, $100k sounds like a huge percentage in your case.

Appraisers are far from perfect or even knowledgeable, and many got their appraisal certificates via online programs.

Furthermore, banks are under the gun and telling appraisers to be uber-conservative. They're frankly making it difficult for values to go up, given they're pegging values to low comps from last year and the last 9 months. Our appraiser literally threw out some comps saying "those buyers overpaid". WTF.

What bank are you using?, if they keep up that policy of lame appraisers no one will go to them.