When Brian Estrada learned that the appraiser hired by his mortgage bank had potentially calculated the square footage of his New York apartment wrong, causing the appraised value of his new home to plummet by $100,000 when he tried to refinance, he sued the bank and the original appraiser. He is not alone. Estrada v. Metropolitan Property Group, 110 A.D.3d 497, 973 N.Y.S.2d 147 (1st Dept. Oct. 15, 2013).
Since 2009, many buyers have sued banks and their appraisers alleging that the appraisal report was inaccurate or inflated. The problem is that before the market crashed, people were buying real property without doing their own due diligence, trusting the banks and their appraisers to tell them if the purchase was a “good value.”
