I received my appraisal at the tail end of the underwriting process and received clear to close shortly thereafter. Have you received your conditions yet?
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Interesting! That kinda slows the process down and if you don't get conditional approval, you are out $425 for the appraisal fee. You should at least be able to satisfy most of your conditions to get your file prepared and ready for final submittal to the UW for clear to close before the appraisal is done. Have you truly not received your conditional approval yet? If the answer is no, please realize your file still has to go in front of the board of underwriters for approval, rejection, or suspension. Those are the three responses the board usually gives. If approved, it is likely conditional and a list of things required for approval are listed in your commitment letter including the appraisal, which is usually a condition for the LO. So you are telling me that you have gotten no farther than Desktop Underwriting because they are waiting for the appraisal before they start putting your file together for final approval?
This must be what my LO warned me about. He said his company submits to underwriting upfront so there are no surprises at the end that could prevent me from getting the loan. He said there are companies that wait until the last minute to submit to UW and he said this is where last minute denials are spawned from. Don't get me wrong, I don't think you will be denied at the last minute but it is such a nerve racking experience to still have to go through UW. He assured me that if there was a problem, they would have told us already. Shortly before clear to close, I asked him if there was any chance I could be denied at this point and he said, very slim chance as I already went through underwriting and they are just waiting for the appraisal.
That is crazy you had to pay all of that money prior to your file being submitted to UW.
Don't panic. It is going to be fine. I know I'm going to see your "Cleared to Close" post soon. :-)
Don't panic. It is going to be fine. I know I'm going to see your "Cleared to Close" post soon. :-)
The company that I'm working with is the same way. We signed our purchase contract and everything at the end of February. Had been waiting to hear about an appraisal after that but just found out last week that they needed the check up front. Paid for that and they just did the appraisal yesterday and we will hear by week's end (supposedly).
In my mind, it makes more sense to do it this way if your house is not a new build, so you know the worth and issues before going through the mess of underwriting. If you waited on an appraisal with a new build, then you would essentially be doing nothing while they built the house. A co-worker is having a home built now and for all the crud she has dealt with in underwriting, I cannot imagine how much longer it would take if they were waiting to do an appraisal first.
Of course, I'm not sure if that's WHY they do it that way or if it is better or not. Our LO was pretty thorough, but I'll let you know how that works out when we actually get to UW.
Our home is a new build as well but an inventory home so it was fully finished when we went on contract. The appraisal was the last thing completed. The price was $347,900 and the appraisal came in at $348,000 so I was good. From offer to close, it was about 33 days. I don't think they can appraise until the house is finished as there is no sq ft to measure, no bedrooms, etc. So there is no choice but to wait for new builds that are not finished. I see the benefit of an appraisal for an established home. I agree that you would want to know the home's worth before going into underwriting. It didn't take more than a week from the scheduling of the appraisal and the final report submittal to the lender for me, so a week's wait isn't too bad. A 3 week wait...nerve racking.