Home Equity Appraisal - Disputing

[Anonymous]

We applied for a home equity loan this month and got our appraisal back on Tuesday. It came back $40k lower than the price we need. After talking to our loan officer, she said we can dispute the appraisal. So, that’s what we did. The original appraisal used comps from houses sold in 11/2018, but there have been a ton of houses that have sold since that time. I’m not an appraiser, so obviously the professional would know more than me…but shouldn’t they use newer sales??

Anyway, because it was a ‘drive-by appraisal’ our loan officer said when we dispute we can send up to 5 different comps but we cannot list any upgrades that have been done to the interior of our house. Talk about frustrating! So, we submitted our 5 comps…all built within 10 years or less of our house, all have same sqft, same lot size, within 0.20 miles of our house, and all have sold for more than the original appraisal value by an average of $61K more.

Has anyone had experience disputing an appraisal??? I would love to hear more stories!

[NC_Mtg_Loaner]

It's a rather sophisticated statistical analysis that requires the homes to be of similar sq. footage, layout and design, but if there are similar comps like you say then you ought to be able to conduct a reconsideration of value.

I recommend pulling out the appraisal from your original purchase if you can find it and then look at the neighborhoods where they pulled comps from back in that period to see if any homes in that area have sold recently.  

It's a long shot but hope it helps.

[JVille]

This happened with my HELOC last year. Chase Bank rolled their eyes at me (really) and would not consider any comps. I ended up switching to Key Bank and presto chango in the space of 3 weeks my home was worth $300,000+ more.

Kinda of has you wondering about the quality of a drive by Appraisal! The Key Bank product was vastly superior and I should have gone with them in the first place.
Good luck with getting them to change their minds. Generally they don’t want to do it. But if you absolutely know your Appraisal is way off be prepared to switch lenders.