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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Good morning! (and need some help...)
I'm having a craptastic day. We got the appraisal for the new house back yesterday afternoon, and it was a huge freaking mess. It came back WAAAYYY too low, so we are trying to figure out WTF we can do to challenge it. I'm so heartbroken that we may lose the new house. 
Does anyone know about real estate shiz? Is it normal for ALL the comps in an appraisal to be foreclosures/REOs???? WTF?!?
ETA: grammar fail & plea for help
Re: Good morning! (and need some help...)
Adventures of A Girl and Her Apron
Thanks, hon.
My Shopping Blog
I am sorry you are going through this. Yes, it is normal to account for all the foreclosures in the appraisals. Foreclosures definitely hurt property values in a neighborhood.
We went through this and ended up having to walk away. If they had come down to the appraisal price, we would have bought the house. They couldn't afford to do that. The thing is, ANYONE trying to buy that house would have gotten a similar appraisal and would do the same thing. And if you are getting a loan, they won't give you the loan on a house for a price OVER appraisal (unless maybe you have a large down payment)... which means the only people that would actually be able to buy that house are people paying cash. Not too many of those people running around! And even then, why would they want to pay over appraisal unless that was the house they *had* to have. The people ended up taking their house off the market because they knew they couldn't sell it for what they wanted to sell it for.
So, go back to the sellers at the appraisal price. It's worth a shot. Pretty much their only option if they want to sell is to lower their price. I know you are in love with the house, but they are in a much worse predicament than you are.
uh, ditto this. so today DH was on the phone about maybe refinancing our house...and yeahhhhh....it's current "market value" is $11k UNDER what we paid for it.
My Shopping Blog
Yeah, we already did go back to them with the appraisal price, and they rejected it flat out.
We are appealing the appraisal through our mortgage representative, but I'm not expecting it to change. I know that they have to include foreclosures, but this crazy woman used ONLY foreclosures - no arms length transactions whatsoever - for comps, which is not an accurate representation of the market here at all. And two of the homes she used are in terrible condition (falling down), whereas ours is in great condition - just in need of some upgrades. It's just really frustrating.
The sellers are the executors of the last owner's estate (his kids). So I think they may try to milk it for all it's worth. But I'm wondering if you guys are right - they may never find someone who can come up with the cash to buy this place, and even if they did, why would you pay that much over the appraised price? Especially for a place that is in need of some major upgrades, too.
It just makes me sad. We'll see what happens.