My wife and I like being Detroiters and we love our place in East English Village —great architecture, fancy plaster, leaded-glass doors and windows, good space—so we’ve decided to stay for the long haul. We’re trying to refinance our 7-year ARM [[it adjusts in a couple of years) to a 30-year fixed. The bank sent an appraiser from Lake Orion last week. He took some pictures and was in and out within half an hour. Today, we received a copy of his appraisal: $20,000.

The new appraisal is 87% lower than one we got almost 2 years ago when we were going to try to fight our taxes. Now, given the current economy, we weren’t expecting that high of an appraisal this time around, but know the house is worth more than 20 grand! If we put it up for sale at that price, it wouldn’t last a day. Even these days, a nicer home in the neighborhood would run you $100,000, if not $20,000 to $40,000 more.

What really infuriates us is that the six comparable sales he used against it were all foreclosures [[only a couple were even in the same style, most had major issues we could see from the street, and some were not even in EEV), selling for around $20,000. We need to paint the outside trim, but our house is by no means run-down.

I have to wonder if this guy even understands the real estate market of a decent neighborhood in Detroit, or if he just kind of assumed that all the houses around here must be worth next to nothing.

Has this kind of low-balling happened to any others of you on the board? If so, is there any way to fight it? Because as of right now, it looks like we aren’t going to refinance any time soon and the $300 fee we paid for the appraisal is wasted money.

Also, apparently low-balling appraisals has become a real problem the last few months across the country:
http://moneyfeatures.blogs.money.cnn...ll-appraisals/