Low Appraisal Recommendations and Options

Please reference your Listing Agreement for DUFFY’s original price recommendations as a reminder.

This is confidential, and we have not shared these original recommendations with any other party.

If your appraisal is outside of this range, it may be worth disputing with your own appraisal.

First, go through the appraisal looking for any errors or inconsistencies. If you can find any receipts for upgrades that you have that you might not have gotten credit fo,r or any errors, call the appraiser with your findings.

OPTIONS:

1. You can request that another appraisal be done (your cost) by the buyer’s lender via their approved appraiser list. If the lender will not reorder and you want to challenge the appraisal, you can hire DS Murphy and Associates to do your own appraisal. Talk to them about how that works.
   (678) 584-5900 http://www.dsmurphy.com
   ***The lender may or may not allow the appraisal for comparison. Talk to DS Murphy about this.
2. You can lower the price to the appraised price. Simply sign the Amendment to Reduce the Sales Price, send it to the Buyer’s agent, and copy DUFFY Realty.
3. You can negotiate with the Buyer to see if they will come to the middle. Cross out the reduced price on the Amendment to Reduce the Sales price, fill in the price you are willing to reduce to, and initial your change. Sign the bottom of the amendment where indicated.
4. You can hold firm to your contract price, wait to see if the buyer terminates, and find another buyer. To do this, you would cross out the reduced price on the Amendment to reduce the Sales Price, write in the originally agreed upon sales pric,e and initial your chang,e then sign and the bottom where indicated. If the Buyer cannot cover the difference between the sales price and the appraised price, they will need to terminate.

HOWEVER

If you accepted an offer with an Appraisal Escalation Clause you likely have no recourse to the above. It is possible the buyer will decide to exit the contract, per the clause. Please refer to your contract to see what your options are. This is normally in the Special Stipulations.

From our experience, it’s possible the appraisal is the lender’s assessment of the Buyer’s credit-worthiness, especially if you are priced within our original recommended range. If the Buyer is a strong Buyer (we don’t know) and they have money in the deal, then the home seems to appraise.

We have had many Sellers who walked away from one deal, put the home back on the market, got another Buyer, and closed with that Buyer at a higher price.

*****Last, keep in mind if this were an FHA or VA loan, this appraisal will stay with the property for up to 6 months for any other buyer using FHA or VA.