Hashem and Hoffer

I may have just started Unilocaling a few weeks ago, but I’ll never be able to write a review as negative as this one.
In short, the appraisal company Hashem & Hoffer are an incredibly biased, irresponsible and unprofessional firm. If you live in central/​north NJ– I urge you not to let these guys do your home appraisal. You’re letting snakes into your house.
After this whole mess unfolded, I looked up our appraiser (David Hoffer) on the NJ Department of Consumer Affairs. David, who did our appraisal, had his license revoked in 2012 for falsifying his Continuing Education certificates. In a random audit, he got caught lying and had to pay a fine, in addition to losing his license for an undisclosed amount of time. But somehow, he got his license back and is still allowed to conduct appraisals!!? If he lied about something trivial like CE credits– what else is he hiding or falsifying???
Anyway– skipping most of the boring details– we were selling our condo in cedar grove, NJ about a month ago. Our buyer agreed to buy our house for $ 185K and everything was good to go, pending our home appraisal. Their mortgage company (Weichert Financial) «randomly» selected Hashem & Hoffer and a disaster unfolded.
First off, the appraiser canceled his first appointment and could only see us on Presidents’ Day. We were away for the weekend, so we had to leave the heat on all weekend (coldest weekend of the year!) for this guy. He then doesn’t give us our appraisal report for 3 weeks!
As if delaying our sale for 3 weeks wasn’t bad enough, he appraised us for $ 165K ($ 20K below the agreed upon buying price). He claimed our condo was 723 square feet– but keep in mind we pay taxes on 900 square feet (assessed for $ 189K). The Cedar Grove tax assessor even gave us the layout of our condo, which is clearly 30×30.
Just over a year ago, our neighbors’ unit sold for $ 185K and they have the EXACT same unit that we do. (Unfortunately, we couldn’t use that comp for our sale because it was more than a year old.). I should also mention that my unit was appraised in 2011 (for a refi) and it appraised for $ 209K. How this guy appraised us for $ 165K in a stronger housing market blew all our minds.
My favorite part of this story is that the buyer asked Weichert to re-​measure our unit because they also felt the appraiser did us a major injustice. Remember– this is the buyer who is willing to pay MORE than the appraised cost because they recognized the appraisal was complete garbage.
The same guy (David Hoffer) came back to re-​measure and he ADMITTED to my wife and realtor that he indeed made a mistake on the square footage of our house. He initially measured the unit at 27′ wide, but acknowledged that it was really 29′. That said, he somehow kept the appraisal price the same.
In the end, we still sold our house to the buyer because they volunteered to pay $ 13K MORE than the appraised price. (I still lost more than $ 7K!!). This simply illustrates how everyone involved knew the appraisal was garbage.
I have since written Weichert Financial’s head of underwriting about our experience with Hashem and Hoffer. Hopefully, they will remove their contract with Weichert after our situation is reviewed. At the very least, Weichert Financial will not get the chance to handle my mortgage, because they selected this irresponsible appraisal company in the first place.
Please learn from my experience– and don’t patronize these snakes. Have a good day!