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How much is that home really worth? Appraisal bias and house-price uncertainty

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  • Leonard I. Nakamura

Abstract

With house prices often below the face value of mortgages these days, the expected return on many mortgages has tumbled, since one of the major forces supporting mortgages, the collateral, has weakened. One source of these mortgage problems has been the validity of the home appraisal, which is supposed to be an objective and expert dollar valuation of the house that should help make a mortgage less risky. Unfortunately, the appraisal process can go awry and often has. As Leonard Nakamura shows in this article, appraisals have been biased upward, making mortgages riskier. Now a reverse risk is at work: The bias is going the other way, causing home valuations to be underestimated, possibly making new mortgages harder to obtain. In addition to problems of bias, Nakamura discusses the appraisal process, how it's supposed to work, and how it can go awry.

Suggested Citation

  • Leonard I. Nakamura, 2010. "How much is that home really worth? Appraisal bias and house-price uncertainty," Business Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, issue Q1, pages 11-22.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedpbr:y:2010:i:q1:p:11-22
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    File URL: https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/frbp/assets/economy/articles/business-review/2010/q1/brq110_home-worth-appraisal-bias.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Montalvo, José G. & Piolatto, Amedeo & Raya, Josep, 2020. "Transaction-tax evasion in the housing market," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    2. Paul E. Carrillo & William M. Doerner & William D. Larson, 2023. "House Price Markups and Mortgage Defaults," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 55(4), pages 747-782, June.
    3. Ozlem Akin & José Montalvo & Jaume García Villar & José-Luis Peydró & Josep Raya, 2014. "The real estate and credit bubble: evidence from Spain," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 223-243, August.
    4. Agarwal, Sumit & Ambrose, Brent W. & Yao, Vincent W., 2020. "Can regulation de-bias appraisers?," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 44(C).
    5. James Conklin & N. Edward Coulson & Moussa Diop & Thao Le, 2020. "Competition and Appraisal Inflation," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 61(1), pages 1-38, June.
    6. Eriksen, Michael D. & Fout, Hamilton B. & Palim, Mark & Rosenblatt, Eric, 2019. "The influence of contract prices and relationships on appraisal bias," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 132-143.
    7. José García-Montalvo & Josep M. Raya, 2017. "Constraints on LTV as a Macroprudential Tool: A Precautionary Tale," Working Papers 1008, Barcelona School of Economics.
    8. José Garcia Montalvo & Josep M. Raya, 2017. "Constraints on LTV as a macroprudential tool: a precautionary tale," Economics Working Papers 1592, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    9. Cem Demiroglu & Christopher James, 2018. "Indicators of Collateral Misreporting," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(4), pages 1747-1760, April.

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