Appraisal challenges in a competitive housing market

Today’s HousingWire Daily interview features a crossover episode of HousingWire’s Housing News podcast. In this episode, HousingWire Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler interviews Ryan Lundquist, market analyst, owner of Lundquist Appraisal Company and author of The Sacramento Appraisal Blog. 

During the episode, Lundquist discusses how the appraisal sector fared during the initial onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and how appraisers are navigating this year’s extremely hot housing market.

Here is a small preview of the interview, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity:

Sarah Wheeler: I would love to have you recap what you’ve seen over the last year, during COVID-19, and then now into this year. What did the appraisal business look like in those early months and what has happened now?

Ryan Lundquist: So, when COVID first began, the market stalled as prices sort of sloughed for a couple of weeks. You know, pending home sales were sloughing for about four to six weeks. I think a lot of people were watching and going, “Is this it, is the market going to start doing something else?” But then we had a dramatic rebound when mortgage rates went below 3%, and people were motivated by the pandemic. It brought everyone and their mom into the housing market. So, it’s been a bloodbath as I think this is the most aggressive market we’ve had. It feels like there are about twice as many buyers compared to the number of listings, even on a national scale. I would say that the market is wildly imbalanced, and I would say words like chaos describe it very well. It shouldn’t be this difficult to obtain housing and to find shelter, but that’s what we have right now. And in terms of appraisals, I think the difficulty is that we have this auction environment where buyers are bidding way beyond anything that’s reasonable.

HousingWire Daily examines the most compelling articles reported across HW Media. Each afternoon, we provide our listeners with a deeper look into the stories coming across our newsrooms that are helping Move Markets Forward. Hosted by the HW team and produced by Alcynna Lloyd and Victoria Jones.