What makes Chandos Pacific better than most appraisal fee shops?

Chandos Pacific is better than most appraisal fee shops because it is not an appraisal fee shop.   Chandos Pacific is a boutique consultant retaining a qualified economist and graduate students to conduct macro analysis, and clerical people to process the reports.  The signing appraiser personally inspects all properties and conducts all key research.  This is essentially a philosophic split from the fee shop business model.  From our perspective, the fee shop model is detrimental to clients as it increases the opportunity for confusion, error and professional liability.  

What is positive about this is a licensed professional meets with your borrower every time.   Should questions arise, there is no third party, or unlicensed junior associate involved.   You can call in to check on the status of your project and speak directly with the person handling your transaction verses the larger fee shops where the partner has to refer questions out to the sub-contracting associate.   We keep things simple by doing fewer reports for select clients.  

I have heard appraisal firms are conservative.  Does this mean my appraisal will be low?   No.  Appraisers bear liability both ways – if they under appraise a property they assume liability if the owner sells the building for too little.   They have a vested interest in looking at both high and low sales and going right up the middle.  In a rising market they will tend to place emphasis on the higher/most recent sales.  In a falling market they will tend to place emphasis on the lower/most recent sales.   Since Chandos Pacific typically conducts a preliminary estimate up front – there is little risk in receiving an unanticipated value.  No surprises.

Will my property appraise for what my loan officer indicated?

Generally speaking, yes.  However, it is actually against the law for an appraiser to accept an appraisal assignment based on a contingent value, thus all preliminary values provided to you by your bank are just that, preliminary.  In practice, loan officers typically have carefully established their own internal value estimates in great detail before your report is ordered.   If all the information provided by you to the bank at the time the report is ordered is found to be accurate, then our findings should be similar.

The only instance when your report could be significantly lower in value is if the square footage of the property turns out to be notably less than originally reported, if leases in place are significantly higher than what surrounding properties are leasing for, or if a construction company has provided you with a substantially inflated construction bid.   Typically most brokers and owners know if their leases are at market and the size of their buildings so this is a very rare occurrence.