I owe more than my house is worth? Felt like i was scammed?

Question

Hi,
we refinanced our home 3 years ago and took some cash out to pay some bills, now we have to move to another city and to find out that we owe 20k. I dont understand? I talked to an apprasier and he told me that the loan company that did the apprasial back then push for a high appriasal. He felt that it should have been appriased about 30k less at that time. What can i do?

Answer 1

You would need to contact an attorney to let them know that you feel your appraiser inflated the value of your home and now you owe more than your home is worth. Contact a couple of real estate attorneys. I am not sure if there is a statute of limitations on this or how long it would be so you may want to contact an attorney ASAP to see what they think. Good luck.

Answer 2

Did he tell you there is a difference between an appraisal and a property evaluation? The loan appraiser works for the lender and his only purpose is the justify the lender's risk in the negotiation. In fact, unless a portion is guaranteed by a third party, the note holder's theoretical loss does not require an appraisal at all. In most states they can obtain a deficiency judgment against the mortgagors for any balances not covered by a foreclosure or maintenance covenant violation.

If the appraisal had been lower you would not have received your cash and a sizable portion of the amount you now owe could have been compounded by accrued interest. Either way, you would have faced a substantial debt.

Like many others, you lost control of your finances. Unfortunately, in business, some short term remedies have long term consequences. There is very little you can do to avoid this debt unless you can uncover a more serious pattern by your lender.

You could start with an Internet search for any public activity. Check with the BBB, FHA and VA to see if they have a disproportionate number of complaints or foreclosures for your area. You could also check with local investigative journalists for similar complaints. These could give you some indication of where you stand, before you increase your liability by retaining an attorney to make cursory inquiries. Good Luck.

Answer 3

You could be the victim of an over-inflated market that has finally started to cool. Even a legit appraiser may have over-valued your property based on Market conditions three years ago. The real problem is that you over leveraged your home with the last refi. Its never a good idea to pull out all of your "equity" except at the time of sale.

As for solutions, are rents in the area high enough to support the debt and operating expenses on the house. If so, you may want to consider renting out the property instead of selling it for a loss. If rents are too low to do this, you may need to hold off on the sale until the market rebounds (it always does).

Unfortunately, the money that you "took out" for bills, was probably not there for the taking, and now you need to replace it to be made whole.

Answer 4

Appraisals run high when interest rates are good (and people want to take money out of their houses at a low rate) and run low when they are bad (no one wants to pay for more house when they have to pay more interest!). On top of that homes have depriciated in value in the last couple of years. This is not exclusive to you...it is all houses across the country. All you can do is try to get your lender to agree to a short sale or try to find someone to apraise the house for a higher amount. If you short sale (which is notoriously hard to do) you will still owe the differeance between what the house sells for and what the loan amount is but it gets the house sold, so you don't have to worry about it any more. The reason this is a problem is if you default on the amount you owe the mortgage company they have no property to take from you.

Good luck...my house has been on the market for 5 months and has shown once...just gotta wait it out!

Answer 5

Market conditions can change rapidly. The fair market values given to properties stem from the use of comparables (these are the sales of home located in your area with your simular size, bedroom court, bath count,pool,fireplace, etc) If the sales in your area drop then your value wil also drop. This doesnt mean your were scammed, this is happening all over the united states due to softening market. Below is a website that may help you further. Hope this helps and good luck

Answer 6

if ever u do this again, use an independent appraiser, not the one fm a mortgage co.All the houses here in S Florida are on the downward trend with an avg of about 10 sales/day out of a population over i million people. Prices have dropped about 15% since last yr after about 5 yrs of 10-30% gains each yr. Avg tax is about $3000/yr

Answer 7

Honestly it will be tough to prove that the appraiser did something wrong. The appraiser will just say that property values have dropped due to the slow economy, and that was nothing he could predict. This has happened to millions of people,good luck

Answer 8

Not a lot. You went into this with your eyes open. You took the money and ran. You can't blame the company. Since the appraisel all property values have fallen. There are a lot of people in the same fix as you. The number of repos are at an all time high. You can thank the Bush Admin for a lot of this fix.pp

Answer 9

That's what happens when George is in office. Just Kidding but in some locations the housing values have dropped. Usually they increase annually. If you feel appraisal was inflated contact a attorney.