The Appraiser From Hell - Part 1

Part of the process of getting a loan to purchase a house is getting it appraised.  The appraisers' job is to be the "eyes and ears of the bank" and let them know if the asset that they're helping you buy is actually worth the price that you're paying.

After the mortgage debacle in the mid 2000s, Fannie and Freddie enacted laws and guidelines to prevent collusion among banks and appriasers, limit buyer exposure, and other checks and balances to protect the consumer (theoretically, anyway).  What this means is that the appraiser you get when you're about to close on a loan is pulled out of a hat and the mortgage broker cannot even talk to the appraiser directly -- they have to go through a third party agency to get any questions answered.

We were very concerned about the appraisal.  Though the house is worth what we're paying for it, it has some issues that a bank might consider risky:  to wit, a chimney that could fall at any moment, tearing off half the house and possibly smushing nearby cars and structures (and people).

The hope was we get an appraiser that looks around the house, checks comparable sales in the neighborhood and says "it's worth what you're paying for it" collects his $500 and we move on with our lives.  If we got a guy that called out the chimney as unsafe, it might destroy the whole deal. The seller was not a fan of this sale dragging on and was not going to make any repairs.  We weren't thrilled about fixing a house we don't own.

So the guy shows up and does his thing.  A day or two later we get the report back and there's good news and bad news.  Good news is that there's no mention of the chimney or foundation or anything structural.  Bad news is that he did call out a few missing things:

• a stove.  The house is missing a stove (it's also missing a refrigerator but evidently we can live without that).  We need to get a stove to purchase this home?  Yes.  Fine.  Whatever.  We go to Hillsboro and get a $75 stove from a family of meth cooks.  Amy got them down to $60.  We're still not sure if it works.
• There's a piece of wall under a window that has some peeling paint and plaster.  The genius appraiser thinks there might be something structural and says we need to get it inspected.  He's obviously wrong and a moron and ugly-on-the-inside, but that's ok - we get an inspector to look at it.  He charges us $100 and apologizes because there's clearly nothing wrong "structurally".
• There's chipping paint "around the windows" that "needs to be addressed".  This is the tricky one.

We should have just put up warning signs saying "DON'T EAT THE PAINT"

What happened next?  Continue on to part two for the harrowing conclusion.