Product: Mortgage

In XXXX XXXX, my wife and I were refinancing our mortgage. As part of that refinance, our home was appraised. The appraisal came back significantly less than we expected. The appraiser 's judgement on value, when compared to comps, seemed grossly miscalculated ( our home was significantly undervalued ). I contacted our loan officer at Bank of Oklahoma and voiced our concern. The value of the appraisal would result in us having to pay PMI for 18 months. Our loan officer said, despite very legitimate concerns, that the bank could do nothing ( and was not allowed to contact the appraisal in any way ), and that they would have to use the appraisal. Our loan officer, XXXX XXXX, advised us that the only thing we could do was contact the appraiser ourselves, explain our concerns, and ask him ( XXXX XXXX XXXX ) to reconsider. I did contact XXXX XXXX, but he was highly uncooperative. Consequently, we had to use the appraisal for our refinance. On the day of closing, XXXX XXXX, XXXX, in reviewing the closing documents and appraisal after we signed the loan documents, I found a blatant factual error in the appraisal. For some reason, the appraiser had not used our property 's legal description in his appraisal. As a result, he listed our property as smaller than it actually is. So at this point, we not only had legitimate concerns over the appraiser 's valuation, but we found factual errors in his appraisal. We immediately brought the new findings to the attention of the bank. XXXX XXXX and Bank of Oklahoma did nothing. We then filed a complaint with the Oklahoma Real Estate Appraiser Board of the Oklahoma Insurance Department. After investigating the matter and holding hearings over a 12-month period, the Board agreed with every complaint we filed - both factual errors in the the appraisal and the appraiser 's grossly miscalculated valuation. The Board agreed that our property had been undervalued. The Board levied fines totaling nearly {$6000.00} on XXXX XXXX and required him to attend 30 hours of appraiser training. By that time, XXXX XXXX had apparently let his appraiser license lapse. There was no recourse for us, despite us having to pay nearly {$3000.00} in PMI that the Board insinuated we likely should not have needed pay. XXXX XXXX appears to have no assets, and we therefore, can not collect any damages. Additionally, prior to that ruling by the Board, we had obtained a home equity loan from Bank of Oklahoma in XXXX XXXX. The bank stated that, because of certain time limit requirements, they had to use that same appraisal for the home equity loan, even though Bank of Oklahoma had the information to reasonably suspect the appraisal was factually inaccurate. Consequently, because of the likely severe undervaluation of our property, we were required to take a higher interest rate, which will cost of thousands of dollars over the course of the loan payment schedule. To our knowledge, Bank of Oklahoma never reported the actions of the appraisal to the appropriate government agencies, despite being informed of actual factual errors in the appraisal. It 's my understanding that the Truth in Lending Act requires banks to report such information. It 's also my understanding in that same Act that the bank could have requested further clarifying information from XXXX XXXX when concerns about the appraisal were raised. However, the bank claimed it could not contact the appraisal, and that they, nor I, could request a second appraisal. Therefore, we had no option of even correcting a faulty appraisal.