I knew I'd put my shit on blast with that reply last night but I'm sour grapes on the health of the current market and the sudden valuation hikes of $200K+ for the same SFH that should never have seen such price appreciation for nothing other than hotter buying demand fueled by too-cheap capital, landlording as a revenue stream, and an asset class to park liquidity. I want to upgrade my home and/or buy a lake house, but feel sidelined for years until the health of the market is restored and right now, price isn't moving down as fast as it should to reflect affordability with lost transactional volume.
Like it's 2008 all over again, I can point to mortgage brokers for gaming the system and appraisers for sticking their thumb tacks on the new valuations, practically working for the realtor. Here we are in April where FHFA increased Fannie and Freddie SFH loan limits up to $1,089,300 in HCOL locations and $726,200 in the rest of the country. Fannie took it one step further in their decision to waive property appraisal for lending:
https://selling-guide.fanniemae.com/Selling-Guide/Doing-Business-with-Fannie-Mae/Subpart-A2-Lender-Contract/Chapter-A2-2-Contractual-Representations-and-Warranties/1645976621/A2-2-06-Representations-and-Warranties-on-Property-Value-03-01-2023.htm
Appraisers are a meaningless barrier of entry to home ownership and certainly haven't stopped buyers from making poor financial decisions, nor of their realtors from discouraging zesty offers, to the detriment of eating their own lunches. And being residents of Texas, we all pay significantly greater property tax on the purported valuations.