The appraisal business in southwest Idaho is still confounding. Typically, the summertime is an excellent time to buy and sell single-family residential (SFR) properties. With the inventory levels we have experienced over the past several years, with historically low interest rates, and with some of the lowest sales prices we've seen in years, one would expect the SFR market to be skyrocketing. Well, it's healthy and moving in a positive direction, but it's nothing like I expected it to be this summer.
Perhaps the pipeline is just filling. During the months of June and July (thus far), refinancing has been the bigger driver in the appraisal assignments that I've seen come my way. I haven't compared notes with my colleague/competitor appraisers for a couple of weeks so I'm not sure what they're experiencing, so perhaps I'm on an island.
I would be surprised, however, if we don't see a large volume of sales/refinancing activity before the summer is over. That's what I'm counting on anyway.