Getting home appraisal, sale price to match is getting harder - Sacramento Bee

Getting an appraisal to match the price for which one's lender has preapproved a mortgage can be more art than science. Realtors In a month when Realtors expected sales to rise, they dropped instead. Having a contract fall through is tough on the buyer and it leaves the seller, who might have contracted to buy a new property in anticipation of selling the old one, out in the cold, too. Many buyers will walk from the deal if they believe they are overpaying. Challenging the appraisal generally is not an alternative, Fox said. An appraisal is an opinion of value, so unless there are some compelling reasons, opinions are rarely changed. Fox, too, advised: "Be proactive, rather than scrambling around after the fact, and after you paid for a home inspection, termite inspection, and the like. And once the appraisal doesn't match the price, walking away from a sale is not as simple as it sounds. Canceling a contract can result in the buyer's losing some or all of the deposit. If the loan-to-value ratio is weak, according to Barbone, the buyer likely will not be approved for the mortgage unless the sale price is adjusted to match the appraised value. If a buyer is financing under FHA and VA, she said, "the sales agreement has a built-in appraisal condition giving the buyer the option to walk away with their deposit money intact. Whenever possible, Realtors, appraisers, and mortgage brokers strongly recommend, try to renegotiate the sale agreement. Said Barbone: "In all of these cases, we review with the clients on both sides of the transaction some options that would keep the sale alive. When the other house in question is new construction, Barbone said, the builder typically writes its own sales contract to protect its position. Accepting the sale and settlement of a former home as a contingency is one thing builders typically won't do, she said, because their financing is leveraged against the contracts they write: "Builders must be able to rely upon the buyer's compliance to close at the completion of the house. The seller may be able to finance more on the new home to bridge the gap. If you see an objectionable comment, click the flag icon below it. We will delete comments containing inappropriate links, obscenities, hate speech, and personal attacks. However, we reserve the right to delete inappropriate comments or ban users who can't play nice. Don't insult one another or the subjects of our articles. If you think a comment violates our guidelines click the flag icon to notify the moderators. Responding to the comment will only encourage bad behavior. Don't say anything in a way you wouldn't want your own child to hear. Only post comments relevant to the article at hand. If you want to discuss an issue with a specific user, click on his profile name and send him a direct message. That's akin to yelling and not appreciated by the audience. Please only flag comments that violate these guidelines. You should also know that The Sacramento Bee does not screen comments before they are posted. You are more likely to see inappropriate comments before our staff does, so we ask that you click the flag icon to submit those comments for moderator review. You also may notify us via email at feedback@sacbee. Note the headline on which the comment is made and tell us the profile name of the user who made the comment. You may find some material objectionable that we won't and vice versa. If you submit a comment, the user name of your account will appear along with it. Users cannot remove their own comments once they have submitted them.