How much time to pick up an apraisal order in SF BAY area?

[Michael Z.]

It is known that there is a big appraisal backlog in sfbay area now. What is the usual time to have the appraisal order picked up and completed from the time it is being placed?
My lender says that the order was placed ~May 3rd and still not been picked up. Does it sound normal?

Are there any ways to expedite the process? Like offering an additional incentive to an appraiser?

[Chris Mason]

Originally posted by @Michael Z.:

It is known that there is a big appraisal backlog in sfbay area now. What is the usual time to have the appraisal order picked up and completed from the time it is being placed?
My lender says that the order was placed ~May 3rd and still not been picked up. Does it sound normal?

Are there any ways to expedite the process? Like offering an additional incentive to an appraiser?

 There is no "normal" right now. Some are still coming back fast. Some are not. @Houston Garcia

Here's what is going on.

Divorce-related appraisal numbers presently outnumber mortgage-related appraisal orders in California, and in the Bay Area (Oakland, San Jose, San Francisco, Marin, you name it). Worth acknowledging that it's crazy that more people are getting divorced than are buying houses or refinancing. Divorce courts being closed for so long (specifically, a year of shelter in place....) created a pent up demand for divorce related services, including appraisals. 

Appraisers love divorce appraisals, probate appraisals too (though COVID-19 seems to have caused way more divorces than deaths). Court ordered appraisals are characterized by no underwriter questioning everything, no Realtors calling them idiots if they don't hit value, no appraisal management company taking a middle-man cut of the appraisal fee and shopping around for fastest/cheapest report. So the court appraisals were always pick of the litter for appraisers, there just generally wasn't enough of that business to keep them busy (because, remember, when millennials aren't busy buying avocado toast, they are also putting divorce lawyers out of business by staying married -- pre-2020, that is), so they "had" to take the mortgage appraisals. Now, that being said, we are still seeing vanilla ho-hum SFRs not only get accepted, but the completed report turned in, pretty fast (almost like they are taking a full appraisal fee, and just f-ing copy/pasting from the refi appraisal they did for the ho-hum SFR three blocks down as part of the refi boom with the same bedroom/bath count, ahem, cough cough, excuse me while I clear my throat). There isn't quite enough court business that they can neglect ALL mortgage appraisals, but they can certainly cherry pick the easy ones, and are.

Of the mortgage related appraisal orders, the transactions most impacted are for non-vanilla homes. Things like 2-4 unit, ADU, or just unique homes in general. Time and money are the two things you can offer, both are forms of currency, and you can trade one out for the other. Time is money is literally true right now. Your choices are a higher fee, or a longer turn-time. For non-vanilla non-ho-hum non-SFR properties where you need the appraisal report turned relatively fast, bids are sometimes starting at $1000 a pop, please take a number and get in line, or exit to your left if you would rather not transact (actually, consumer-driven bidding wars are not common, most common is 2 or 3 appraisers name a price/turntime combination, and you can either pick one, or not transact).

If the listing agent does not sell a lot of homes, they may be unaware of this. It's systemic though, for non-vanilla, non-SFR, non-ho-hum, and/or unique, real estate, so they can't really do anything about it but complain to the buyer's agent and loan originator. At this point I have a template email that shuts them down pretty quick. The decent producing Realtors, the ones that sell a fair amount of homes, already know what's up and aren't doing a lot of hands on hips drama routines with pointless threats and all that (top producers never do drama routines anyways, it's a characteristic of being a top producer, and in case someone takes this as gendered commentary because I referenced hips, it is decidedly not gender specific, drama propensity is equal opportunity in this case), but the lower producing realtors are all working on their Ph.D's in Drama Llama Sciences. So far, knock on wood, because it is systemic, and because everyone uses the same pool of appraisers it's not like you can "go somewhere else" (if you bounced the buyer out of contract in favor of another buyer, all you are doing is resetting the appraisal clock back to day 0 of ?, and being on day 10 of ? is better than being on day 0 of ?), I haven't had a single buyer lose out on the house over appraisal delays (knock on wood).