Hurricane Sandy is also making its presence felt in the appraiser’s corner of the real estate industry. The Federal Emergency Management Agency continues to flag storm-affected areas as disaster zones, which means both lenders and investors will need to redo inspections for properties appraised within the previous 90 days, Housing Wire reported. That will hold up closings until reassessments are done.
Because of the large amount of properties ravaged by Monday’s storm, lenders and appraisal management companies are now ordering a special type of appraisal report to avoid repeating appraisals. The goal is to analyze what effect the storm has had on the property’s marketability and collateral value, to see whether a damaged property is still worthwhile collateral for loans that are in progress.
“Since the day after Sandy hit, about 20 percent of our pipeline is requests for disaster assessments,” Kim Perotti, executive vice president of AXIS Appraisal Management, told HousingWire. [HousingWire] — Zachary Kussin