Just checked my inbox and noticed I got the following nasty email from the guy who owns this place. the text below is from him:
I just saw your pathetic review. Ignorance is obviously your strong point. The house down the street was completely gutted and remodeled. Your house is, well, not like that. Piedmont and your neighborhood are not the same. You got my response to the uninformed comparables that you suggested. Maybe you should have read the response. An appraiser's job is to compare similar properties, not dissimilar properties. Zillow is a joke in most of Oakland because its based on algorithms that are simplistic and don't recognize the irrationality of relying on $/sf as a valuation factor. To make your house similar to the one down the street would take $100,000's to accomplish. The houses that you said sold for a different prices in my report were "pending sales" and my comments stated that I was aware that they would likely sell for more than their list prices and therefore given NO weight. Thanks a lot for trying to damage my business because you didn't get your Zillow estimate. Maybe you should spend some time taking care of your house and cleaning that cat box more than every 3 months.
2nd Update: I don't usually update reviews, much less three times but.....I had my house appraised on the 12th of may, five months to the dot since Donohue appraised my home and guess what? it appraised at $270,000 MORE than what Donohue appraised it at. This guy cost me not only my appraisal fee but 5 months of paying a higher interest rate because of his under-market assessment.
UPDATE: I crossed referenced the homes he listed for comparable and found that at least two of them sold higher than Donohue listed in his report....
TERRIBLE!!!! This joker estimated the value of my house at $257,000 LESS than the Z-estimate on Zillow and $250,000 less than a smaller house on a smaller lot in comparable condition sold for two months ago that is literally 4 doors down from me. He did include houses that were OVER a mile away from mine in his estimate. he cost me lots of time and money and cost my bank my business. True incompetence is difficult to come by but somehow I think they've perfected it.....
The most recent homes that sold in my neighborhood all went for over $800K. You can't but anything for less than that but non of those homes were in the report.
I'm thinking of filing a complaint but not entirely sure how. It seems to me that appraisers ought to be held accountable for accurate valuations. I could understand my house coming in at slightly less than I imagined but 250K less is orders of magnitude less. read more