Do I have any protection for a bad appraisal?

General Real Estate Investing
1

Last November I bought a property using some by the book tactics as a newbie. As everyone knows this is forumal for disaster and I learned my lesson.

I bought a property site unseen for $125,000 pending appraisal and inspection. My inspection mentioned it needed about 2-5k in repairs and that held true; the appraisal came back at $137500. The appraisor was recommending by my finance company; I recently am pursuing selling the property and my realtor said I would be lucky to have it appraised for 75k and couldn’t believe it was appraised for $137k and mentioned I should talk to a lawyer. What worries me is that she specializes in this area of downtown and has sold about 90% of the properties on the block so she knows what the selling rates are and such. As a realtor she probably sees appraisals in that area on a daily basis.

I am researching what my options are but do we as consumers have any type of protection against BS appraisors?

2

You may be the victim of loan fraud. On the surface, it appears that the seller, the loan broker, and the appraiser colluded to defraud you and perhaps the note holder.

Your next call should be to the district attorney who has jurisdiction for the area in which this property is located. Perhaps there is a criminal case to be pursued.

At the same time, consult your own attorney to determine if you have any remedies here. Perhaps the attorney will know how you can get the courts to vacate the sale.

3

Thanks for the reply, I will contact my lawyer tomorrow…my biggest worry is that there is nothing I can do. From what I have been reading the only way to protect against loan fraud is to not let it happen in the first place.

Argh…