Patricia Villegas, Review

Very poor appraiser
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by Dillonm, Jun. 21, 2014

My lender hired Patricia Villegas to do the appraisal for my home and this is what transpired. The appraisal was made a little confusing by a comment on the bottom of it and a contradictory section on the second page of the appraisal which states that there are NO physical or adverse conditions that affect the livability, soundness or structural integrity of the property. Which seem to be in conflict with the bottom of the report.  where it states:

"The photos included in the report are the interior photos required by client is not possible to take photos of the change of the flooring level noted at the subject property. There was change in level of the flooring throughout the living room, hallway between the bedrooms and one of the bathrooms. This change is more noticeable throughout the main bedroom. The appraiser only observed accessible areas and the appraisal cannot be relied upon to disclose conditions and/or defects in the property. The appraiser is neither a building inspector, engineer nor a contractor and is not qualified to comment upon whether or not damage may be which was not apparent from a visual inspection. Appraiser conducted a visual inspection of only the accessible areas. "

Additionally Patricia stated that there is a possible structural problem but stated she was not qualified to comment on it. I thought this was extremely strange for a couple reasons, one I have never noticed a change in the level of the flooring in the two years I have owned the home, nor did the home inspector or the VA appraiser notice a change in the flooring when the home was inspected before I purchased the house.  Second the Appraiser stated she had visually inspected all accessible areas of the house, this is absolutely incorrect.  The crawl space nor attic were looked at and they are both accessible. I believe that to properly ascertain if the house had a problem with the flooring she should have looked in the crawl space because one would be able to determine if there was a problem with the flooring by looking at the footings and floor joists of the house.   

During the inspection the Patricia asked me to open the hot water heater closet and I asked her if there was anything else she would like to take a look at, she said "no." The appraiser asked me a short time later about the footings of the house and I told her they looked good and I had an inspector look at them when I purchased the home two years ago and there were no problems and the VA appraisers didn't find any problems either.  I asked her if she would like to take a look at the footings, again she said "no." she finished up the inspection and left after a total time of 15-20 mins of inspection.  

After talking the lender about the amendment to the appraisal she requested from the appraiser to clarify the original appraisal on the issue of the floor, so I decided to call Patricia Villegas myself and find out what the problem was. Patricia stated she saw some high and low spots in the floor which I thought was weird since I have never noticed them. I asked her about her inspecting all assessable areas of the home and she said "I did", I told her you didn't inspect the crawl space, after some back and forth discussion she admitted the report wasn't correct stating that she hadn't inspected all assessable areas because she had not looked at the crawl .he appraisal is confusing, contradictory and bordering malpractice by the appraiser on what was inspected.  It would take a structural engineer much longer than 15-20 minutes to determine if the floor was uneven and that would be looking at the footings and the floor joists. The appraiser made an arbitrary claim with no tolerances or threshold for concern and made a bold statement that by her own omission is not qualified to make. The appraiser used poor choice of wording in describing changes in flooring level, giving the impression that there is something wrong with the home. Appraisals are not cheap at $400 I would expect a full inspection of the house and a factual report which even the appraiser agreed was not factual and the comment should be stricken from the report .  The end result was the lender had to get another appraiser out after I had to higher a structural engineer to tell me what I already knew and that was the floors were perfectly fine. Thanks Patricia bang up job!

* this reviewer has be with this appraiser for <6 months
* this reviewer had 1 - 2 dentists before.
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