One source said an appraisal originally quoted at 10 days finally made its way back into their office nearly 27 days later.

Just as it has for every other industry in the country, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the U.S. housing market in unexpected ways since March. In this case, record low interest rates and spikes in applications have created a backlog many companies are struggling to manage. Appraisers in particular are having a hard time keeping up with the volume for both refinance and purchase loans, resulting in increased turn times at one of the most critical junctures in the underwriting process. Many lenders are still being quoted two to three weeks, but it’s changing rapidly. One source said an appraisal originally quoted at 10 days finally made its way back into their office nearly 27 days later. A lender in a particularly hot market said several AMCs couldn’t guarantee they would be able to get an appraiser out to a property in less than four weeks. The No. 1 issue noted across the board was appraiser attrition, which has only been exacerbated by the pandemic. “What’s happening is because it’s difficult to become an appraiser. And because you have to go through third parties whenever you have a spike in production, those agencies and appraisers get backed up,” said Phil Treadwell, vice president of development and regional manager for Mason-McDuffie Mortgage. “There’s not a whole lot that can be done — at the end of the day we have a finite number of appraisers. You all of a sudden have to hire more support staff to maintain your current level of support.” Brian Covey, vice president of regional production for LoanDepot, agreed the industry is seeing a constraint in capacity not just in the appraisal space, but underwriters and complex areas of the lending sphere as well. “There’s not enough underwriters in the country that have skills and training to underwrite the amount of velocity in this mortgage demand. That’s why everybody’s turnstiles are impacted,” Covey said. “The same thing with appraisers — there’s not enough qualified appraisers with the amount of volume that is coming in.”

Source: HousingWire