what can you do besides get another appraisal if you dont agree with the results. The house appraised much lower than we thought it would. How far off is the tax assessor's value?

You can ask your realtor to give you a list of houses that have sold in the last 6 - 9 months - within 2 miles of your home - that are close to the same as yours in house and land size - and condition and send them to your loan officer and ask them to ask the appraiser to reconsider the value based on the sales you submit.  this usually does not alter the opinion or value these days.  You can pay for another appraisla and submt to ask for a reconsideration of value.  the vaule of your property is based on home sales  in your area the last 6 - 9 months and if your community has a lot of short sales - this could certianly cause your value to decline ... I am sorry, as a homeowner myself, it's a terrible blow to find your home value is not what you expected -

The tax assesor's value - it depends on when your town last did an assessment.

If you want to see a higher value on the appraisal than the only option is to roll the dice and pay for a second one.  The tax assessor's value can be way off.  Here's some interesting points to keep in mind.

"Some local governments will appraise your home every year, others every two or more years. Tax assessors generally use one of two methods to come up with an assessment value for your home. The most common relies on looking at recent sales of comparable homes. Keep in mind that “recent” is a relative term. To come up with a real estate assessment, assessors may be looking at sales that occurred as long as 18 months prior. Alternatively, especially in the absence of recent sales data, assessors will calculate the cost to rebuild your home, and add that to the estimated worth of your land to come up with a dollar amount."  They're also not going to be doing an interior inspection of the house, and sometimes rely on formulas that assess whole streets or neighborhoods.

Since the city is collecting taxes based on this assessed value, you can see why they might decide to inflate the value. 

With the new HVCC Appraisal requirements, you can request an appraisal reconsideration.  Contact your lender to discuss this option, but there is additional cost involved.

Good Luck

http://www.sdmortgagefinder.com/index.htm

Thanks to all!

Very helpful!

I attempted a reconsideration, but the homes in my neighborhood that I presented to the appraisor were for sale and none sold in the rages I presented in 12yr to 18 months.

I also talked to a realtor and she said she would list the house for $229k. Appraisal was $197500. Tax assessor $213k.

 I am suppose to close march 22nd. The lender said there was nothing else to do but file a property tax return.

We are trying not to pay PMI. The loan amount is $190 and interest rate 4.875% vs 6.5%.

What should I do?

I think the odds of you avoiding PMI are very slim. You might want to consider FHA...

It is FHA..

A new FHA mortgage will always have PMI, no matter the loan to value ratio. 

Well it's actually Mortgage Insurance Premium, not PMI, but it's still an extra monthly payment that is included with all new FHA loans.  It will drop off after 5 years or after your loan to value ratio reaches 78%.

Not sure where you are getting your information from, but FHA loans ALWAYS have PMI.  Upfront PMI of 1.75% of the base loan amount (which can be financed into the new loan) and monthly PMI.  The only time you can get the monthly PMI waived is when the LTV goes to 78% of the original loan amounth.

As far as appraisal re-consideration goes, it is very, very difficult to get done today.  Realtors telling you what they would list your house for is meaningless and the county tax assesor is not an accurate determination of value either.  The only thing that matters really is closed sales of comparable homes in the last 12 months.

Based on the appraised value of 197,500, it sounds like you are looking at a new loan amount of 190,587 plus 3,335 for the up front mortgage insurance for a total loan amount of 193,922.  If you have 190k to pay of on your current mortgage you will probably be looking at bringing around 5,000 cash to closing, because your closing costs will probably be somewhere between 5 and 6 thousand.  It would definately be worth it though to drop your interest rate from 6.5 to 4.875. 

Good luck.

In the good faith estimate is "your charges for all other settlement services" is the closing cost? If so it is $2,556.

Is "your adjusted origination charge" is for points? If so that is $7,723.

Do those numbers sound right?

Sorry, I got the numbers backwards in previous post.

Origination charges $2556.

settlement services $7723.

total $10279.

This is a FHA loan.