If you ever want to pay someone $675 for a poorly researched, badly written and factually…read moreinaccurate home appraisal, then this is your company! If you're lucky, you might even get a passive-aggressive letter from the owner after you politely respond to the appraisal with a list of errors that were made in the report!
Owned by Netra Lauderdale (a top candidate for the most incompetent home appraiser in the state of California), this company has expertly proven that they do not have the slightest clue about the real estate market in the territories they cover.
In the Fall of 2012, my wife and I were purchasing a triplex in Burbank and Netra's company was selected by our bank to perform the appraisal. Considering that we had made an offer to buy the property for well under the going rate of triplexes in the area, we felt very confident that AmerAppraisals would be capable of studying the area and accurately pricing the property for well over our offer price based on other similar Burbank sales.
How wrong we were.
When Netra's report came in, we were shocked to find that she had somehow appraised the house at over 20% below the true market value! Of course we understood that it's natural for an appraiser to come in a little off of what's expected, but for the difference to be this extreme we immediately knew something must be wrong. How could she have missed the mark THIS badly, we wondered?
It was quite simple, actually.
To start, of the five comparable properties Netra chose, four of them were so far from similar to ours that we were immediately laughing as we read the report. It was at that moment that we knew we were dealing with someone who hadn't a single clue how the Burbank housing market worked, and clearly could not be bothered taking a break from her incompetent existence to do any research.
Of the four (in)comparable properties she chose, two were far north of ours and saddled up right next to the Burbank airport, while the other two were not even in Burbank but the neighboring city of North Hollywood! For those unfamiliar with the area, North Hollywood is a rent controlled dump that is in no way comparable to the city of Burbank or its surrounding area. But, because she was just most likely not interested in doing her job and chose to just rush through the report, Netra actually specifies in the appraisal that the NoHo properties are NOT rent controlled, and even continues on to explain why they are great properties to use as comparables! More laughing.
As for the fifth property, much like the other two Burbank properties, it one was far, far north of ours and located right alongside the I-5 (hello freeway noise). If Netra had even taken a moment to study the city of Burbank, she would have realized that the most valuable properties are in the southern part of the city and homes begin to lose value as you travel north. But, because she is terrible at her job and clearly phoning in the work people are paying her their hard earned money to perform, she did not do this research and instead decided to try and take our money and run.
Unfortunately for Netra, she did not cover her lazy tracks well enough and provided plenty of evidence for our bank to review before issuing us a chargeback of the $675 fee she tried to steal from us. Better luck next time, AmerAppraisals!
Also, shortly after receiving the news that AmerAppraisals had failed, our bank agreed with us that a new appraisal was in order. We quickly hired another company to perform the work and, to nobody's surprise, this time the appraisal came in much higher and more true to the real market value of the home. Crisis averted, lesson learned. Never again AmerAppraisals!
