A weekend topic starting with UCLA Anderson. "Given that home equity typically represents a serious chunk of a household’s net worth, the stakes are highly consequential when contemplating selling. While some decisions to sell are driven more by non-economic factors (a job relocation, for example), for many people, timing the sale to extract maximum value is important."

"Cornell University’s Nicolas Bottan and UCLA Anderson’s Ricardo Perez-Truglia find that the urge to get top dollar is strong enough that, even among households that have already listed a home for sale, the probability of actually pulling the trigger and making a deal declines when the prospective seller is presented with the prospect that the home’s value will continue to rise over the next 12 months."

"Bottan and Perez-Truglia set out to create a real-world lab by contacting homeowners who had recently listed a home for sale in the spring of 2019. They sent letters to tens of thousands of homeowners containing information on local home prices. The researchers’ goal was to track the extent to which that price information impacted actual sales."

"The researchers then tracked actual sales data over the next 28 weeks. (They sent the letters out in mid-June 2019 and tracked transaction data through year end.) Among the non-owner occupied, whose sellers would seemingly be most influenced by financial considerations, every 1 percentage point gain in the forecasted price reduced the probability of selling by nearly 4.8 percentage points."

"Bottan and Perez-Truglia lay down real-world evidence of the causal relationship between price expectations and market behavior. But basing decisions on future possibilities is always a gamble. Just ask anyone who held on to a house or winning stock last year with the expectation it would sell for a higher price this year."

From The Motley Fool. "While reading my real estate brokerage's message boards, I noticed that agents were reporting home appraisals coming in low. There were rumors of appraisers never even entering properties due to COVID-19, instead of basing the appraisal on multiple listing service (MLS) photos. This is not exactly new: There are circumstances where an exterior-only or desktop appraisal is ordered. But appraisal standards appear to be greatly relaxed because of COVID-19 concerns. What effect does that have for investors?"

"During COVID-19, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) ordered Fannie and Freddie to relax appraisal standards. (The FHFA is the government agency established after the 2008 housing crisis to regulate Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Bank System.) These relaxed standards have resulted in a mostly negative effect on home prices, making it difficult for sellers trying to sell a home, buyers trying to get a high enough loan amount approved, and investors trying to refinance loans to buy more properties or to make the numbers work on new investments. Not a pretty picture."

"'We have noticed that home appraisals in our area are coming in slightly lower.' - Nathaniel Hovsepian, owner of The Expert Home Buyers, a real estate investment company in the Central Savannah River Area (Georgia and South Carolina)."

"'The appraisals we have gotten on the houses we are buying or selling have come back, on average, 17% lower than expected during COVID-19. The real issue in the market is that there are a lot of distressed situations. Distressed homeowners who had their homes on the market are selling at discounted rates to offload the property, while homeowners in good standing are holding onto their [asking] price and not selling. Since appraisals are based on recently sold properties, the [distressed sales] are negatively affecting the value of surrounding properties.' - Shawn Breyer, owner of Atlanta House Buyers in Georgia."

"'There has been a squeeze of lower appraisals for investment properties for both purchase and refinance transactions. Some lenders we have worked with in the past will not fund the purchase or refinance of investment properties at this time. - Chris McDermott, real estate broker and investor at Jax Nurses Buy Houses, a real estate investment company in Jacksonville, Florida."

"'I've had a couple of appraisals come in low during the pandemic. There were some notes on them about the changing environment due to the pandemic, which they did factor into their final number.' - Al Wisnefske, Realtor in Wisconsin."

"'I've noticed that ever since quarantine began, home values were suddenly coming in low from appraisals. It's not that appraisers are refusing to go inside of homes; it's more likely that homeowners would rather not risk themselves being infected -- that's why appraisers are finding less work in these hard times. A low appraisal on a well-maintained home creates a vacuum of money. The homeowner would rather wait until the value of the home goes back up versus selling immediately. This causes the timeline for the purchase of the home to be stagnant.' - Eugene Romberg, of We Buy Houses in Bay Area, San Francisco, California."

"For investors who are relying on a loan, a low home appraisal can be a deal breaker, as lenders might not lend at all, or if they do, at more unfavorable terms. Low appraisals can also nix both fix-and-flip and buy-and-hold cash-buyer deals, as they could signal a bad investment and the low appraisal could be an indicator of bad times ahead."

The Oregonian. "It’s hard to sell an unusual custom home. Look at the shiny, Aqua Star floating house at Southeast Portland’s Oregon Yacht Club marina. It’s been for sale for almost 1,000 days and the price dropped $145,000. The new asking price: $850,000."

"The property at 14125 N.W. Germantown Road seems to have it all: 6.4 gated acres, some planted in Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes, and a 400-bottle wine cellar concealed in a hillside. The owners originally listed the property for $7,175,000 in 2015, soon after spending seven years and millions to create the castle, as reported in The Oregonian/OregonLive. The price is now $3.9 million."

The Los Angeles Times in California. "It’s been a rocky road for Sylvester Stallone in La Quinta, but the movie star is trying to knock out a home sale in the resort city once more. His desert digs are back on the market for $3.35 million, or $849,000 less than his original asking price five years ago. The Oscar-nominated actor appears destined to take a loss on the property; records show he picked it up a decade ago for $4.5 million."