World Business

HOPE MILLS, N.C. —

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After 25 years as a doorman on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Carl Petrone was fitted to retire from the cold winters and his daily exchange.

Petrone and his wife, Marie, wanted a hearth someplace warm, and build it in North Carolina - a red-brick tri-level attached a quiet, tree-lined street. It was bigger than their tiny place in New York and came with the right price.

The home was appraised at $114,500. The real possessions agents dropped the price by $6,000 to make the sale. “We thought it was a steal,” Marie Petrone remembers.

It was a steal - a steal from the Petrones.

As the couple would discover, they were the unwitting victims of an unscrupulous appraiser and - as uncovered by the agency of a six-month Associated Press investigation - a poorly designed system unable to keep up with such dishonesty.

Only a month after the Petrones bought their house with a conventional mortgage, Carl Petrone was diagnosed with cancer. He and Marie decided to move back to New York to bear being with family, and listed the home at $118,500. There were a couple early offers, all for much less.

“We thought: ‘This is crazy,’” Marie Petrone said. “The appraiser uttered the house was worth $114,500, so wherefore would we sell it for $100,000?”

A reinvigorated appraiser concluded their hotel was worth only $98,000 and said the Petrones had been duped in 1999: The home hadn’t irreclaimable value. It was just never cost the reward they paid.

An angry Marie Petrone filed a complaint with the North Carolina Appraisal Board, alleging the original appraiser, Ed Britt, conspired by the real estate agents - who also owned the home - to inflate its value.

“I called regularly to ask for updates. But greatest part of the time they never returned my calls. Finally, I just gave up,” Marie Petrone said.

Board director Philip Humphries declared his agency should have contacted the Petrones. But he defended the board’s overall performance in regulating the state’s 3,500 appraisers.

“The mere fact that a number of complaints have been filed in opposition to a person doesn’t narrow that all of the complaints reach the direct of whither there needs to be disciplinary feat taken,” he declared.