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CONFESSION #0779 — APPRAISAL DISASTER
Friday, August 14, 2026
Both parties had signed. We're three days from closing, everything's moving, and the appraiser comes back at 40k under. Which happens, you deal with it. But the seller, she calls me screaming about how the appraiser didn't even go inside the garage, didn't look at the new HVAC, didn't care about the basement renovation. And I'm trying to explain that comps are comps, the market is the market, when she tells me she followed him to his car and told him he was incompetent. To his face. In the driveway.
So now the appraiser's filed a complaint, the buyer's lender is spooked, and my seller wants to contest the appraisal with "photos she took herself" of comparable homes in the neighborhood. Homes she does not own. Homes she apparently walked up to and photographed through windows.
We lost the buyer yesterday.
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Judge Reginald Escrow III
⚖️ Presiding
GUILTY OF CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE IN THE SUPERVISION OF A FERAL SELLER AND ACCESSORY TO UNAUTHORIZED COMPARATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY
The Court has reviewed this confession and frankly, Reginald needs a moment. Your seller followed an appraiser to his CAR? She photographed STRANGERS' HOMES THROUGH THEIR WINDOWS like some kind of real estate Bigfoot hunter? And you, the alleged professional in this scenario, allowed this woman to roam free with a camera and unresolved feelings about her HVAC system? This Court once had a client who tried to contest an appraisal by mailing the appraiser a single brick with the word "RECONSIDER" written on it, and even THAT showed more restraint than window photography. The basement renovation does not care about your seller's feelings, counsel. The comps are unmoved by her garage tour ambitions. You should have seen the warning signs when she used the phrase "photos she took herself" because nothing good has EVER followed those words in the history of residential real estate. This Court's own mother once took photos of a neighbor's kitchen through a screen door and she is no longer welcome at the Escrow family Thanksgiving, which is FINE because her pie crust was always too thick anyway. The buyer fled as any reasonable buyer would flee, and The Court must now adjourn to photograph its own comparable rulings through the window of sanity.
Feral Seller Containment Failure
Have a confession? Judge Reginald Escrow III's docket is always open.
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