Appraisal Denied Due to Lack of Comparables

Thanks for sharing Kay, this never happened to me ever!!!

In certain markets, especially with unique homes, rural properties, or rapidly changing prices, appraisers can actually decline an assignment due to lack of comps. That doesn’t always mean the home isn’t worth the price — it means there isn’t enough recent data to confidently justify it to the lender.

Kay, guess I was lucky, my last two transactions of my career, both listings, had buyers with large down payments and there was no appraisal needed.  In fact, thinking back, not sure how long ago, one came in low.

Kay Van Kampen we have that problem here in CT with log cabins.  We do not have many of them, and there is usually several miles between them, which always causes an appraisal issue.

Good Thursday morning, Kay. Thankfully, this is not a typical issue in our market.

So true about appraisal denials.  I had a listing that was originally mapped with a Kingman AZ address and zip code.  Later this property was added to the Golden Valley zip code. The VA would not accept comparables outside of the Golden Valley zip code even tho there were comps far closer but in the Kingman zip code. 

Kay, this is such an underappreciated problem — and you've described it precisely. The appraisal wasn't denied because the home isn't worth the price. It was denied because the data infrastructure couldn't support the value. That gap between actual worth and what the system can verify is something I see on the underwriting side too. Lenders routinely add requirements above agency minimums — what we call overlays — and borrowers get denied not because they don't qualify, but because the lender's internal threshold is stricter than the guideline. Same logic: the reality is there, the documentation to prove it within the system isn't. Really valuable post for buyers and agents to understand.