The National Association of Realtors released their May Existing Home Sales Report and reported:
The Realtors said that home sales rose 2.4 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.77 million last month, from a downwardly revised pace of 4.66 million in April. Prices, meanwhile, were 16.8 percent lower than a year ago.
That’s all well and good, but there was a new wrinkle this month. Someone to new blame for continued weakness in the housing market.
You guessed it: The Appraiser.
“We have just been flooded with e-mails, telephone calls on the appraisal problems,” said Lawrence Yun, the Realtors’ chief economist.
“Poor appraisals are stalling transactions. Pending home sales indicated much stronger activity, but some contracts are falling through from faulty valuations that keep buyers from getting a loan.”
The NYT’s Floyd Norris writes a great blog post on this topic called Realtors: Blame the Appraisers
Source: matrix.millersamuel.com
