We sold our house about a month ago. The buyers were non-contingent. They have signed off on everything except the appraisal. Our house is 3133 square feet and county records show that. The appaiser says it is only 2864 square feet and did not measure the house. He is basing it off of comps in the neighborhood. We have an extra room that those homes don’t have. The house appraised for the purchase price, but the buyers might back out because they think the house is smaller than what was listed because of what the appraiser is saying. Are we entitled to the buyers deposit? Can we sue the appraiser for giving out wrong information which resulted us in the loss of a sale? The market has dropped since we sold and there is no way we can come close to getting another offer like this.
Thanks to everyone who responded. It turns on the appraiser was WRONG. He came back, not very willingly, and admitted that he missed an entire room and not the room we thought. We are still trying to figure out how you can walk past this particular room and assume that it is not part of the house. The thing that irritates me the most is he claimed, I don’t get paid to come back a second time. Well, if you do your job right the first time, you wouldn’t have to come back. I know mistakes happen, but he was so adamant that he wasn’t wrong, even when we were providing all the facts that he was. Sorry for the vent! This is a very stressful time.