Posts with tag home appraisals

By Jeff Brown Like many young things, the housing recovery is suffering some growing pains, as appraisals lag rising prices and make it difficult for borrowers to get loans. The problem, mortgage-data firm HSH Associates says, starts with the conservative appraisal standards implemented during the financial crisis. That... Continue Reading »

Unless you've been living in a cave for the past five years, word surely must have reached you that home values have been declining for a while. Yet 42 percent of the people polled by Zillow recently said they thought home values appreciate by 7 percent a year. Really, people? Even in a normal market, typical appreciation... Continue Reading »

The housing market stumbled again in April, as tight lending practices continue to hamstring buyers. Existing-home sales fell 0.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.05 million in April, down from 5.09 million in March, according to the National Association of Realtors. Compared to last April, when buying... Continue Reading »

Do you know how much your home is really worth today? Have foreclosures affected its value? Can you trust the appraisal? "Homeowners don't know what's going on around them anymore," says Kim Bradley, of Marquee Properties, a full service realty company in Northern Virginia. A lot of the confusion centers on... Continue Reading »

When Chris M. decided to list his home in upstate New York and move closer to Manhattan to ease his wife's commute to her new job, he ran into a major hurdle: "There was no consensus among the agents we spoke with about what our house was worth," he said. The solution? Hire a local appraiser to handle the job of evaluating... Continue Reading »

When President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Act in late July, he ended the controversial Home Valuation Code of Conduct or HVCC, now set to expire in 90 days. HVCC was implemented in May 2009 by the Federal Housing Financing Agency "as an attempt to improve the independence of appraisers by prohibiting lenders and third... Continue Reading »