MONTGOMERY APPRAISAL

Description of Work: Ted Montgomery was selected by my bank to do a appraisal for a Refy loan. Ted's appraisal came in $75K under my conservative estimate, $30K under Zillow, $50K under Trulia.com, and $50K under our Realtor's webtool for appraisals, and $30K under the County's fair market value. This is after recent sales in the neighborhood within 3 months. The bank stuck with the appraisal so I walked on the loan and my $500 deposit. I would have been willing to go with a $30K or even $40K lower estimate but the $75K was just too much more to put down to buy down the mortgage. Ted used two comps (Comps #1 and #3) from neighborhoods within .25 mile but from entirely different elementary school districts. We bought into our neighborhood for the 950 API scores of the local elementary school. The main two comps were from an 850 AP schoool. Everyone in Silicon Valley knows the first criteria for a home is school district (since there are 21 school districts in Santa Clara county). A +100 API differential is huge. Ted told the bank he lives in Almaden and therefore knows the area well. Also, there were weird discrepancies. For example, older homes in our neighborhood are tear downs. We have three homes that were tore down this summer and 3K+ ft homes built in their place. a recent tear down on a smaller lot was purchased for $557K. I would assume this is a pretty good estimate of the land value. Instead, Ted puts $500k for land value of my larger lot. Also, certain homes with "good condition" get adjusted down while other homes with "good condition" get nothing. $50K in major upgrades (hangrohe fixtures, steam shower, marble master bath, new appliances, insulation, solar attic fans, landscaping, etc, etc, get a measly $10K adder. It was as if the bank told him to come in at a specific value and he made the numbers fit.