Appraisals During COVID-19.

Appraisals During COVID-19. 

Ordinarily, your mortgage lender will want to have an appraisal completed on your property. An appraisal is a process of assessing the marketability and condition of your property. Ultimately, the appraiser is hired by your mortgage lender to determine what is known as the ‘fair market value’ for your property. Usually, or at least before COVID-19, the appraiser would visit the property and conduct an interior and exterior walk.

Upon the onset of COVID-19, appraisers and mortgage lenders needed to take an immediate revised approach. Needless to say, the underlying importance of property appraising, even during a pandemic, was motivation to develop a quick solution.

Below, we will share with you our recent expenses for safe appraising: 

We have been recently experiencing the following approaches to safe-appraising:

• The appraiser will inspect the exterior of the dwelling and walk the lot.

• The homeowner is scanning supporting documents to the appraiser; ie: MLS listing, recent MPAC assessment.

• The appraiser takes measurements of the house and lot.

• The homeowner is interviewed by the appraiser (by phone or at a distance) and asked about recent renovations, additions, or issues.

• The appraiser takes photographs through the outside of the property windows.

• The homeowner is instructed to provide photographs (time-stamped) or a recorded video walk-through. 

As illustrated above, appraisers quickly adapted and implemented a process to ensure the continuity of appraisals – which are instrumental to most purchases and refinances. Considering the fact that some home-owners were under contract to purchase, or under contract to complete a refinance prior to the outbreak – not all homeowners had the option to ‘wait things out’.

In Canada, CRA and AACI appraisers are licensed and regulated by the Appraisal Institute of Canada. To learn more the AIC, simply click here. 

Update: As of September 30, 2020, although we most recently heard of a spike in COVID-19 cases, it is still very much business as usual. In fact, appraisers are now entering the interior of properties and have been for the past few months. At least more than they were at the onset of the pandemic.