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and you're good to go all right we're in business um okay off we off we go let's see if this is uh yes okay so welcome everybody thanks for tuning in and getting some information I guess the idea here is that with our coab at 19 you know there's a lot of questions about what's going on out there in the marketplace so I've wanted to put some things together first let me do a couple of things here some thank yous err in order for the IAR staff had that have been extremely helpful in putting this together for us specifically nick allen who is the technology officer and and Amanda Nagle who helped get this put together she joined with Cindy to get our get our stuff all set and ready to go and we appreciate all of that so thank you - thank you to all of them and then thank you to all the agents out there and you guys are working hard and trying to figure out ways to make this all come together and and perform in and these kind of weird times and so I want to thank all of the agents that are out there working hard and doing that so um with that you know so far we've been like essential in the business and we appreciate that and I'm sure Jen's gonna talk to us later about that but there's just a lot of talk in the mark and a lot of individuals who are talking you know news organizations that like to bring out stories that kind of stuff so what-what I thought we ought to do is get some people together that actually know what they're talking about and in different perspectives different areas of our business so we assembled these these five individuals - to come out and visit with us and offer their information so just quickly less so Grove our stack I appreciate you being here Rachel Flint who is our new construction specialist that we put in here Chuck Simmons who is our lender du jour to bring us information there Jeremy Antonia our appraiser just to give us all the the latest information there and then Jen Qinglin who is our lobbyist for and for the Iowa Association so want to do just that quick introduction and and thank all of them one note that I didn't want to make quickly sorry I have to I have to read to remember because I'm old so I know the Board of Directors voted at this last meeting they sure most of you have heard that they voted to waive the maid dues and listen we know that's not a lot you understand that but it does mean it does mean quite a bit to some of the folks that are out there who are you know scraping to put deals together and stuff but listen if you're not one of those people if you're doing well things are going well that kind of stuff then I I guess I would encourage you to move that money and use it to to make it better for some other people my personal my personal feeling is that the the food bank of Iowa is serving like crazy out there and trying to stay up with everybody so if you if you don't need that money pass it on that's it would be multiplied many times inside of this the food bank of Iowa so I just want to throw that out there real quick so with that what we're gonna do and thank all of you I know there's a ton of you out there and please feel free to type in a question as we move forward we also have a poll that les is going to talk about and so with that we're gonna go to les soul grove and what i want each of the panelists to do is introduce yourself I think we all know you but introduce yourself talk about what you do maybe how long you've been doing it and we'll just we'll just go from there give us give us your your specialty and then give us them now in the in the world that you live in give us the now that's very good hey welcome guys appreciate the opportunity to be on this panel it's it's certainly interesting times that were in my name is les Saul Grove I'm a realtor with via realtors I've been licensed since 1990 so I'm coming up on 30 years this fall and I've been kind of following market statistics for the last close to 11 years and it's it's just kind of an interesting time to be following stats so you should have seen a poll pop up on your screen right now and the National Association of Realtors has been putting out a what's called a flash survey for the last few weeks and I thought it would be interesting to take four questions out of that survey that they are producing and ask our membership today kind of to fill that panel that poll out for us and when we're done afterwards we'll take a look at the results and kind of compare it to where we are nationally and I think that's a good theme of everything as we're gonna kind of compare things today and talk about how we're doing things nationally versus nationally so the poll will remain up here for a while if you're on a mobile device an iPad or something you might want to go ahead and take the poll and get it out of your screen if you're on a desktop system you can kind of move it off to the side someone just asked the question they thought it was an ad can any way to get it back up Nick I don't know if you can restart the poll for somebody or not but I don't know the answer to that so I'm gonna jump in here lantus got his hook ready so if I go too long they're just gonna cut me off so that's okay what I want to talk about here today is kind of the basics the basics of our marketplace and we talk about active pendings and solds and kind of what's going on in our market and what you should see on your screen is a graphic that shows a green line that's kind of going it kind of looks like it's going straight across there's a little bit of that's the daily active count of homes for sale that I track and if you look around that first part of March you'll see that that number instead of continuing downward which is kind of typical in a spring market we we see this the number of homes for sale kind of go downward as the buyers wake up first we buyers really wake up first and then the sellers wake up so when buyers wake up they start looking for houses to buy or foodie or whatever and as they start to take some of that inventory we see our inventory drop and then as the market wakes up the homes start to come on the market and this graphic will start to go up so to see what it looks like compared to last year you can see we typically go through about the first part of April where all the buyers start eating that inventory and then it starts to pick back up and around the first part of March air we had you know the Colvin virus kind of started to take effect in our inventory started to kind of stall out and it's not like we've had more inventory we'll talk about that in a second when we get into the pendings here but what we've seen here is rather than to see inventory really take a huge spike or continue to drop it's kind of leveled out now we had a week here about a week ago that inventory kind of jumped and I think that was kind of some buyer demand kind of jumping into the market people are anxious to buy houses and that's good for us they're just they kind of jumped in there so you can see we're I don't think we're going to be too far off of our trajectory from last year once things kind of come back into play so though if we look at pendings now pending inventory is really the best indicator if you're going to follow any graphic or any any stat in our MLS Hennings are probably the best one to follow because pending activity is what's really happening now this is what's you know not the closed transactions necessarily but it's gonna forecast where we're going to be not only now but also in the next 30 to 60 days and you can see the typical trajectory in the spring market comes up until about that March or April first mark there we were on our way right up and I know a lot of you have been very very busy and still are busy and that's great but you can see what's happened here is that buyers kind of tailed off just a little bit and let's put this in perspective over last year and you can see that we started out 2020 ahead of last year so it was already an active market well over last year and the gap really started to pull apart from last year which is what we all have felt in fact this gap and this increase in pendings is what's driving all the positive news about how home sales are over last year because all the homes that have sold just prior to the cove enviros really taking effect with our buyers are all now closing so what this is gonna tell us is that June and July we're gonna see don't don't be surprised and don't we down on this but we're gonna see a drop in close year over year sales that's just gonna be part of what we're gonna see so prepare everybody that it's not the world isn't following the thing isn't you know nothing's going bed with our market it's just the cause and effect so months of inventory has also been is also a great indicator of where red in our market place and again using this same analogy of looking at 2020 versus 2019 well here's the 2020 months of inventory and I've got mark there at March 1st two point six months of inventory and that's kind of our bench market of when things really kind of started with affecting us with kovat virus and you can see that until about the first of April things were really working along pretty good but then all of a sudden as those pending started to tail down okay that's all that automatically increased our months of inventory and you can see that our months of inventory now is is up it's a little bit flattened off here which is okay but let's look at it compared to last year and because the 20 20 months of inventory line is below 20 19 again that tells us that we're in a faster paced market until we weren't or at least we aren't for this month of April and you can see that we're our months of inventory has now slowed down a little bit so homes are going to last a little bit longer on the market and that's not necessarily a bad thing you have buyers out there that are wanting to buy a home that have been kind of waiting and this just tells me that we've got some inventory out there we've got about almost three months of inventory and that's perfect for right now with the coronavirus we've also seen a little bit of a spike in that dreaded back on market topic here you can see that starting into the first part of March we were trailing along pretty close to last year 24% was our back on market rate as of March 1st compared to 27% last year but we crossed over in the late part of March and whether it was because of home inspections whether it's because of job furloughs maybe somebody's losing their job or being laid off closings maybe you know maybe a buyer or seller just decided to head cold feet and backed off our back on the market rate is up a little bit this year and I do expect that to come back down but we're right at 30% as of last Sunday so 3 & 10 deals as of last week were we're not making it to the closing process versus 2 in 10 about a year ago not a big big number to really worry about but it's just when we kind of watch here to see what's going on in the marketplace cindy was a nice enough to send me the Cindy bells was nice enough to send me the showing time reports and this is the national showing time reports I thought this was a kind of an interesting graphic to see compared to D Mar this shows from the beginning of the year whether showings are up or down versus last year and across the country until about March 10th everything was in lockstep I mean everything was about the same and around March 10th or 15th they're nationally buyers kind of stopped showing and this indicates that the lockbox opens the showing time and not lock boxes but the the showing time appointments kind of tailed off now this is nationally here's Des Moines and this is really actually a positive graphic to show these two will show you that number one okay twenty twenty is the orange line this tells us we were very active and this I love this because it matches our pendings graphics here but we also had our period where we kind of slowed down but we really haven't slowed down tremendously in fact you can see in the last about week or so we've actually picked back up and I think this is a testament to Iowa you know being understanding when it's safe to maybe be out and kind of picking up activity so I like this graphic it's not nearly as negative as the national one I'm going to end on two graphics here and and before I get the hook here we always track or I always track weekly open houses in this past year I started splitting out the open house traffic by resale which is the blue and new construction which is the purple and you combine the two and this number is the number of open houses each week that were listed in the MLS and the percentage above that is the percentage of overall inventory so for example in january week 1 the first weekend 12% of all homes for sale were were held open and i would say that we typically run around that 25 26 percent across-the-board most of the year however you can really see where week 12 hit and we had a huge drop in open houses and the biggest drop was probably in the resale inventory we had 92 homes resale 77 week 1349 the next week obviously week 15 was Easter weekend yes there were open houses on least on Easter weekend there were twelve resales open and I think a couple of those were actually virtual open houses and a hundred new constructions this past weekend it kind of bounced back so I think that this is going to be kind of our norm in fact let's kind of look at that year-over-year the purple now is the total number of open houses and here's that week 15 that we had our Easter slow down from opens which is normal the red line is 2019 and this one that you're seeing right here in week 16 was Easter last year because Easter doesn't fall on the same week Easter last year was week 16 so that's the drop so this is where we typically would have been and we were pretty much right on target with our open house traffic and you can see actually in the fall we have this big bump as everybody says hey let's get these homes sold before winter so I think I'm gonna stop with mine here and see what kind of questions we have and let Lance jump in I do see a couple of questions about getting the graphs and the information Holly I will the this information all the graphics I produced today will be available to DMR and it'll be it'll be put out there I also on a weekly basis and it's going to start next Tuesday I've been doing them Sunday nights I've been giving a live update on zoom and I'm gonna start doing those Tuesdays at noon and I'll make sure that the link is out there so anybody can join in and I'll just go into more in-depth on this kind of stuff on that particular day and this will be a weekly update so Lance let us thank you so much for all of that information we'll be working on this as we as we move forward and I you know I appreciate the segue of bringing them the new construction part of this open house and traffic and that stuff and so I want to I want to open and welcome Rachel Flint to come in and tell us all about you and who you are I know that you played shortstop so I want to have you bring that up as part of the as part of the introduction because you know shortstops are special people's oh please please go from there okay well first of all I have to follow a less Soul Grove I mean who wants to do that that was some really great information less thank you for sharing my name is Rachel Flint and I am the current president of the Greater Des Moines Home Builders Association for so all of our Home Building friends that are out there they are joining on this call so thank you and welcome and then I would just like also to say how awesome it has been this year to work with you Lance the partnership between DMR and the Home Builders Association is only getting stronger and that means a lot to all of us so I personally just want to say thank you for that I am also the vice president of Hubbell homes I have been with Hubbell for 16 years now and I've been running the home building division for going on seven years now so what are we seeing in this marketplace from a new construction standpoint a lot of the things I was gonna mention les really highlighted you know open house traffic is down considerably but I would say we start to we started to see an uptick las
week where we're wondering if maybe people are starting to get a little more used to this or we kind of equate it to a hard winter right hard winters people are in their houses they can't really get out as much and so some of the things that happen in that process is your online statistics start jumping through the roof we have seen just at Hubbell we have seen website traffic increase 33 percent with online sessions increasing 34% but here's the key of that online leads have increased 400% so really the big focus right now is how are you utilizing your online market presence and and how are you a getting more people into that funnel and then with that funnel how are you moving the ones that are in how are you moving that through faster so those are some of the things that a lot of our builders are working on in terms of the subcontractors National Association of Homebuilders last week had a national stand down day and what that's down down day was is that they asked all of our trades all of our subcontractors all of our partners to stop work for 10 minutes on Thursday last week and educate teach go over the National Association of Homebuilders guidelines for koban 19 safety so that has been primarily the number one focus for a lot of our builders out there it's just saying okay how do we keep our trade partners safe so that we can continue building new homes for people and get them in we have limited the number of trades that can be allowed in a house at one time which which definitely has helped it is impacted the schedules a little bit but not much from what we're seeing maybe delays of maybe up to a week the delays we are seeing is on the pipe on the supply chain and I will tell you there are not really that many cabinets seems to be the number one thing that has been delayed and it's anywhere from typically you would see cabinets you could get those like if you put in your order you could get those within two to three weeks we're now seeing anywhere from four to six weeks depending on the manufacturer we're also seeing some HVAC linux specifically has had a few delays and also our light fixtures any of those things that were coming from China those have been delayed but I know a lot of our subcontractors in the area have worked very hard to help find like materials so that we the schedules are not being changed true too drastically so that kind of highlights timing what we're seeing from subcontractors I would say overall with a new construction that we've talked to everybody is extremely positive and you know again we equate this to a hard winter if you look back in more of 2019 there were some there were several things that happened in March unless you'll probably attribute this to this was the first 11 days of the month of March it was sub-zero temperatures I think there were some places that had wind chills of negative 42 so we were extremely cold we had a lot of snow it was the 58 wettest march in history according to Iowa Department of Agriculture and then it followed up by unseasonally warm temperatures which caused a lot of flooding and so there was distractions to the marketplace with all of those things that happened last year so we were worse we're still in a good position this year but again it's kind of like a hard winter and I think we're gonna come out stronger for this but it's going to take a little bit of time thank you thank you so much for that I appreciate that and thank you again for your you know cross involvement and especially early on when we were trying to figure out all the co vat19 and what we do and what our responses are as associations and you were a great help to me in that and just you know showing me your calmness and thoughtfulness of getting through and trying to communicate with people you know making sure that you know people are safe out there so that's that's a huge thing so I appreciate that so thank you for your input and we'll certainly come back for more just as a break in the middle here just one you know anybody that is drinking something more or other than coffee salud so with that we're gonna go to Chuck Simmons and there's Chuck there has been a lot of a lot of rumors out there about lending and you know that kind of thing so I appreciate you coming on and giving us some input on what's going on what you see so give us your introduction and your take I sure well thank you and I appreciate being a part of this panel as Lance said my name is Chuck Simmons I've been lending for 23 years now I'm currently the vice president of the Iowa Mortgage Association so I've been doing it a while I've been through a lot of the ups and downs and this is definitely something we have not seen before and what I want to do first is kind of take you back a few months to you know before things got really crazy what was happening is in into February we were seeing rates at some of their lowest levels and so there was a lot of purchasing going on there was a lot of refinancing going on and it was already stretching you know the a lot of these lenders what we work on are called warehouse lines and so you know those warehouse lines were already being stretched but then once you close a loan and then you get paid on it I mean that that replenishes that warehouse line so middle of March when there were the concerns with the coronavirus all of a sudden they you know investors had concerns it rightfully so that if people were to be laid off it was going to affect if they could make payments and it was going to hurt these investors even more and so while everybody was focused on how low rates were what was really happening on the back end of it that nobody was looking at was the fact that all of these investors that were having issues or concerns with liquidity were now in panic mode because they were concerned they were not going to get paid and so what transpired over the next three to four weeks was unlike anything that I've ever seen and I talked to a lot of people in the industry unlike anything they've ever seen and it led to a shift on the mortgage side where things became very difficult overnight guidelines started to tighten you know rates were all over the board there were companies that used to do a certain type of loan like a jumbo loan or a government loan that all the sudden overnight said we're not doing it anymore there were borrowers in process where guidelines in some instances had change maybe they hadn't locked in yet and so you know we've been working through through all of that the furloughs are creating some issues you know we we've got some deals where maybe everything's fine with our borrower and they were supposed to close in you know 30 days but on the seller side something happened and and delayed their closing so we're starting to see not as many yet as I thought we would see but we are starting to kind of see a ripple effect with that forbearance is that in the news a lot right now and and I think you know everybody's probably seen some details on forbearance but but you know there's a lot you need to do if you have a client who's talking about forbearance make sure they're talking to their servicer because the main part with forbearance is if you are in a situation where you can't make your mortgage payment now and you go to the servicer and they agree to delay those payments for six months they are expecting month seven a lot of times that you're going to make seven months worth of payments and if not they're going to spread those six months over a 12-month period where it's still going to be hard to catch up and lately what I've been seeing from investors is any borrowers who do forbearance are basically waiving any right in the future to be able to refinance so there's a lot going on with that that people need to be aware of the biggest impacts that I've seen with all of this government financing is not like it was a month ago there are like I said there are lenders who can't do it anymore or just won't do it pricing has gotten very tough now there are some lenders who are still doing it and their pricing is good there are others where it's just completely changed how how there new business marginal buyers are affected the most so somebody that you may have had pre-approved a lender may have had pre-approved in February where maybe the credit was 6:30 and they were looking at doing a debt to income ratio you know that was in the 50% range those have all changed now and you know most lenders have come out with higher credit score requirements lower debt to income requirements so if you are working with buyers that their last pre-approval the last time they talk to their lender was you know February or early March you're gonna want to have them have a conversation again to see if they can still qualify for you know what what they did before and in a lot of instances it's not there are some changes that you need to know about jumbo loans that market there is not an appetite for right now so it's hard to find any loans over in the Des Moines area it's five hundred and ten thousand four hundred dollars so the higher priced homes are much harder to finance you're gonna look at a lot of banks that are doing internal loans with that and then investment properties is the latest one we've seen some investors we're starting on with new locks as of Friday they're not doing investment properties anymore doesn't matter how much you put down they're just that that's a market they're putting a freeze on right now not every investor and and the you know one of the biggest takeaways from this is if you're working with a buyer and they run into a roadblock with whatever lender they're with check around you know use that central Iowa Facebook page or check with a couple other lenders and that's what we do as lenders I've got a group of people that I'm talking to constantly and we are comparing guideline changes and you know I've given up a few deals that I could no longer do but on the flip side I'd gained some that another lender couldn't do that we could and so it's so across the board right now that you know we're all just we're working together to try to make sure that the agents are taken care of and the buyers are taking care of the best way possible so you asked about what's next and for me what I think as liquidity concerns start to ease guidelines are gonna start to return to normal I don't know how quickly they'll get back to where they were or if they'll get back down to exactly where they were but I've already you know I saw some notes from some some colleagues that their companies are already starting to ease the restrictions a little bit so there there's a thought that once we kind of get over that curve things are going to come back to normal conventional options are strong so borrowers with good credit and it you know 5% you can get by with as little as 3 but but 5% down rates are really good right now so you know the business it's busy I mean the businesses out there so the conventional options are strong government is going to be spotty for the foreseeable future again depending upon the lender and their appetite for it FHA VA USDA loans the the pricings across the board and the guidelines are always changing and and the biggest thing that I would say you know for what agents can do to help and Jeremy's going to talk about timelines a little bit I'm sure as well 30-day closes are hard right now I mean it used to be where we're like yet we can get it done it's tough and I would almost say you know give us 45 to 60 days the more time you can give the better it's going to be and then if we get things done and we can close sooner we will but I think setting those expectations with buyers be flexible know that at anytime something could you know we could be clear to close and closing in a week and a furlough could happen to somebody and it's going to kind of everything so you know communicate with your buyers make sure that we're all on the same page and really flexibility is going to be the key until we can kind of get things back to normal all right Chuck thank you so much for that for that input I know that there's so much misunderstanding going out there and you know news sources and people on different websites are talking about different things so it's good to get a perspective of somebody that really is in the thick of it knows what's going on so with that though I'm one go-to - Jeremy there's there's so much going on up there right now for appraisers between all of the refinance things that are going on the timelines that you're doing with the valuations that are out there and what they're going on as far as changes so Jeremy jump in here and and give us an update on your world alrighty tell me tell us about you first been in the real estate business since early two-thousands I started as a loan officer and shortly after that I became an appraiser so for about 18 years have been an appraiser and I'm also a real estate agent for about the past four years now so I've kind of done majority of stuff within the real estate world that gives me a little bit different viewpoint on some of the stuff and I try to keep up on underwriting guidelines and everything else but with that things that we've been seeing out there in the braiser world and I've kind of been talking to a few other appraisers on a few different forums that we have here locally as to what's going on with with what they're seeing also besides what I'm seeing is just the onslaught of refinances that are still going on right now they're putting all of us behind I mean with rates of where they're at in these low 3s we're just getting piled on with appraisals and there's there's certain guys out there I mean I'm probably waking up at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning type in reports and going to bed at 11 o'clock at night so and this is six days a week so we're we're doing everything we can but with that I mean two week turn time if you're lucky you might be able to get 2-week turn times right now but most likely it's probably close to a three week turn time with most appraisers from the ones that I've been talking to you right now so if you have purchased deals going on right now and you're expecting a 30-day close you have you know a week before probably the appraiser even sees that request to do the appraisal and there's three weeks out and then it also has to go to underwriting you're really probably not going to be hitting your close B if that's the case unless you want to pay a rush appraisal fee or something that nature and finding an appraiser that has the time to take on a rush is another issue from what we're seeing right now but other things that we're seeing also that also puts us behind on the appraisal world is just everything going on with kovat as homeowners not wanting us to go inside their homes I mean not just refinances but also on purchase deals will call homeowners and multiple times I'm getting into properties we'll call real estate agents getting into properties we'll have we'll have real Realtors trying to get us into properties and we're just getting delayed all over the place because which is understandable homeowners do not want us going into their homes they don't want anybody outside that's why they're being quarantined and a lot there's a lot of people out there that are high-risk so as appraisers majority of us are trying to take a different Avenue as to making sure that not only we're keeping ourselves safe but keeping homeowners safe by wearing gloves I mean I have cases of gloves currently that I've been going through a box of gloves every three or four days currently if masks I have you know cloth masks I don't have anything that's I can donate medical but we're doing things that we're trying to make homeowners feel more safe the other thing that we're doing is we're asking homeowners to leave lights on leave doors open so when we come into their house we're not touching anything so they don't have to worry about sanitizing their house it makes them feel more safe as we come into their house maybe the only thing that we touch is that front door and that's kind of our main objective so as we're going into people's houses if we can get in there we're trying to do the best job that we can to protect everybody
ut the first obstacle is actually getting homeowners to call us back and get into those properties just because people are afraid it's just kind of the environment that we're living in right now so other thing that we're seeing out there is with these with sales being down and the comparables that were required to use and underwriting is getting a lot tighter with what's going on and lending they're expecting sales of comparable sales to be in a tighter formation as to if you have a home that's a five hundred thousand dollar house they're wanting to see comparable sales within that neighborhood or within a close proximity within a certain period of time they're trying to fit it in to that little bubble and we just a lot of times don't have the sales out there so as agents I suggest you do some research and make sure if there is going to be issues there you may want to pre warn your clients as to appraisers only can go off the data that they have and a lot of times were restricted as to the pad that data that the lender allows us to use we can go outside of that but they may not consider that data that we go outside of that timeframe maybe twelve months whatever it may be maybe want us to stay within a mile if we go outside of that distance they may not take those comparables in consideration they may put a review on it and it could be someone from outside the state it could be from in someone inside the state that'll give them a completely different value that could kill a deal for you guys and it's best to know this stuff up front as to know what's out there for sales that might be comparable on your properties and maybe have those sales available so if an appraiser does run into not finding sales may giving those sales and seeing if they are comparable that the other problem is that item having is when the Realtors do provide sales it's you know a townhome for selling for $700,000 and they're giving me you know homes and Glen Oaks that that's our single-family homes that don't compare to something that might be somewhere else in the Des Moines area so it's making sure that they are comparable they are there would be and someone's gonna buy this house they're gonna buy this other house making sure that they would match up to that and an appraiser can explain as to why would be comparable but outside of that that's kind of what I'm seeing is there any questions that anybody has or anything that you want me to go over there Lance no I think for now that's that's a good idea just gives us you know where you're at and what's going on I know time frames are such a big thing you know and we'll come back around and the second time and I'm gonna get your thoughts on a couple of things but right now I'm gonna move in and talk with gen Keeneland you your Lancer muted right now so we can't hear you oh sorry I am muted sorry somehow that got beat anyway I appreciate that Jen Qinglin just step in here and give us an idea of what's going on in your world I know you're busy there's a lot of stuff going on thank you up front for working so hard to keep this essential and just give us an update from your perspective it looks like her internet keeps going and now unfortunately on up let's see if we can get her back sure there she is am i coming in yes you're back in now well I apologize technology is not my forte and it is not my friend for those of you then know me this this is not this is not what I do I'm not even on Facebook so I'm going to try to talk you you you all right I'm gonna reach out to Jenn and see if she can call in that'll be easier on her part maybe we can have someone else go in the meantime yeah let lets let's go through I don't know questions I see there's you wanna hear the question here is for a Jeremy what about appraisals being contested and how's that going for for you Jeremy um I don't really see too many appraisals being contested at least by the lender side of things I mean if alemdar has questions a lot of times anymore they don't really come back to us a lot of times anymore what they're gonna do is request review appraisal done on it and a lot of times it's a local reviewer that looks at it and I've not had anything really come back I've had seen reviews being done to kind of justify making sure their Ducks are in a row as - there are no other comparables out there or this is you know in line with value because there's just such a lack of comparables so you see it happening and it's a lot of times with with their new automated underwriting systems that if it comes back at a certain rating and Chuck could probably knows more about on what criteria asks benefit in when they request these reviews but if it it's those things they're gonna request a review on it as for appraisals coming in short and being contested I mean we get that every so often and most appraisers I know are open if there's something that's out else is out there that's homeowners consistent about you on you know we're human we make mistakes majority of us are willing to take a look and if there are other sales provided look at those sales and see if they are comparable that show if it's a different value than what's our opinion previously was so that's kind of what I'm seeing right now for different contested appraisals that were dealing with out there okay Chuck do you have anything you want to add to that or is that covered well no I covered it well what we normally do ninety percent of the time when people want to contest appraisals it's because they don't like the value and and that's hard to argue you know unless we can see something flawed in the appraisal so the first thing that we would do is go back to the agents and have them send us what comparables the agent or the the appraiser might have missed and get that back in just to see if there was a mistake if it's they they don't agree with the opinion there's not gonna be a lot that changes on that it has to be a flaw where something was missed one question though I wanted for Jeremy one thing what one change also that we see is that we are allowing a lot of times drive-by appraisals instead of the appraiser having having to go in physically to the property do you want to kind of talk about the difference between how how that makes a difference um yeah there with the new co bid they call them a kovat 2055 drive bias what most lenders and AMC's are calling appraisal management companies are calling them with that what we're required to do they're kind of an enhanced drive by so it's not we're just driving by like the old 2055 drive-bys that we used to do where we drive by take a photo take a street photo and be on our way and then kind of do our research of the office they're requiring us to make sure there's no extraordinary assumptions as to we used to make extraordinary assumptions on condition of the inside possibly maybe remodels or things of that nature were required to not make any extraordinary assumptions pertaining to anything with this property we're required to go out there and get the data that that may be whether it be an old listing or having the homeowner provide photos or do a video walkthrough and I've done a handful of them where they will do a video walkthrough with me and to make sure that that we're not missing anything so it's pretty much a full appraisal on these particular deals and a lot of people a lot I've had a few Realtors call me and question as to fees on these drive-bys get it got a drive-by they think it's good and really with these they're actually more work than a regular full appraisal so it's it's one to where I know most appraisers are charging kind of a regular fee on these enhanced drive-bys and desktop there's also a desktop but I've not seen any of the desktop appraisal yet but it's we're required to more or less get as much data as going out there and viewing the property as we would as we would so just and compile that information and include that in our appraisals too so all right sir I appreciate that those are some good questions and appreciate the answers Jen are you back on again are you available can you hear me and if not I don't know if you can see me but can hear yes we can hear you perfect I am so sorry I apologize you guys so I will get right into it I know we've got probably a lot of questions but anyway I'm Jen King Lind I've been your lobbyist up at the Iowa State House for the last 20 plus years and every year that we're up there we think that it can't get stranger or that something new can't happen and lo and behold this happen we were chugging through session really nicely our legislation our priorities were going you know fine we were up to the second funnel week and then the outbreak happens so on March 17th just after midnight the legislature suspended their their the legislative session at that point and they suspended at that point through April 15th since that time it gave the Legislative Council the ability to then suspend it further if need be and they did suspend on April 9th the Legislative Council met and now we are pushed back to coming back into session on April 30th that's as of this point you know having said that the legislators took this opportunity not the opportunity but they they were kind of forced into a position where in order to keep the public and their constituents and everyone safe that's why they took this you know this measure there's a hundred and fifty legislators from all across the state and certainly they didn't want the spread to happen any farther or quick more quickly then it already was so they decided to put us on hold also there's the the other part of it where we have students coming in the capital obviously public people from all over the country I I had a an interaction with someone where I was shaking their hand days before this happened and I said as we're shaking hands I said well where are you from and she said Seattle and at that point the outbreak was very prominent in in the Washington State area so it it lets you know quickly just how many people come through the Capitol during their their time in session so having said that they've all been home since March 17 the legislators are still doing their work obviously they're doing their work for their clients just as you do for their constituents I should say they are you know listening to their constituents on what the issues are that are important that when we do get a chance to come back in and reconvene session what issues will need to be handled at that time there also you know living their lives just like we are socially distancing and doing their own work so they are still very readily available the legislators are I've called several of them and the leaders at various times they're always willing to take our call they're always willing to listen to some of the concerns that we're having at this point and I'm just going to go through a few of the issues that we tackled right off the get-go it seemed like as far as calls and how we were communicating with them we heard from several of our members you know we wanted to continue to work we need to continue to sell homes and and help our clients and we wanted to be classified as an essential business so we worked hard with our partners as we do during these types of situations whether it's attorneys lenders abstractors you name it we kind of all had a coalition moving together to ask the governor's office to let us to continue to do business and to if she did shut down further businesses that we would be classified as an essential business we got a very good response from the governor's office on that obviously she hasn't closed many more businesses since then and instead doing the social distancing so but we are in essential business and the interesting thing about that is there were businesses that we're actually asking to be shut down I was getting calls from whether it was my hairstylist or something they were begging to be to be shut down and we are taking the opposite approach with yes keep us open and keep us essential so it was kind of an interesting scenario for them so that was the first thing we tackled the second thing and there have been many things since one of them the primary thing with keeping the County Recorder's office is open with the abstractors the attorneys we all need to get those documents in order for a closing to happen so that was something that we worked with eisah and our other our other partners in a real estate transaction and also again sent letters to the governor's office asking for them to encourage the County Recorder's to have their offices open so we can still do business and she did the governor did send out a letter to that effect because of our letters their remote notarization was another thing that we were working on that was legislation that had passed the prior session but it didn't go into effect until July 1 remote notarization we had asked the governor to to speed up that process so we didn't have to wait for the legislation to to go into effect on July 1st and she again responded to our letter on that and said that remote notarization would be allowed within the parameters of the legislation as it passed and was supposed to go into effect on July 1st that we would speed that process up now I think there was some confusion confusion on remote notarization because it isn't it isn't something that you can just Skype it is something that you have to have parameters and vendors that are approved by the Secretary of State's office so it wasn't something where you could just kind of flip a switch I know that the Secretary of State's office has worked to put those parameters and put those vendors online so we can create those relationships with those vendors and start getting that up and going but it probably is one of those things that takes a little bit more time than that because it wasn't a Skype or a zoom type of situation where you could that was never the intent so we had to we had to get some of those vendors in place which they are now so hopefully that's going a little more smoothly the governor's office also they've delayed our property tax payments as many of you know they have also extended the appeals that if people have assessments that they want to appeal locally the appeals process has been extended as well and we've been working on that many things at the federal level our National Association has been working very hard and diligently on as well with the Paycheck protection program and the cares Act obviously the PPP as they call it the Paycheck Protection that is something that we as independent contractors can use and that's a very important piece last night they again did the second phase of the cares Act and there is additional funding for PPP as well as some loans for small businesses so those guidance and those principles will be coming out soon as well so there's a lot of things going on in that cares Act I just wanted to also mention there was 1.25 billion dollars at this point that is given to Iowa for for our for our use now what those parameters will be and how that can be used is also in the works right now that one point to five billion and the governor and legislators are looking at that so that is kind of an assessment of where we are to date on that Lance and if you were giving me the hook I apologize because I can't see you no that's okay gender there's a lot going on and we want to get all of those updates and I appreciate that and I appreciate it I I know for a fact the hard work and the hours that you put in to try to stay in contact with the governor and make sure that to the extent that you can we're we're we're essential and we know that and and we are responsible enough to do things the right way and I think that's borne out by the by the issues that have come to forefront here we did we do it the right way we try to make sure our clients are are taking care of and or you know our other new thing is that we have to make sure that they're safe and that we can give them some advice on what the CDC is recommending and stuff so I appreciate that Jen in right now I think what we've got to do is look that we are we're in a time crunch and and I understand that we're gonna go over just a little bit what I'd like to do is quickl
go through and give us something that has changed that's not going to change back so let's go on that perfect and Nick while we're doing this would you go ahead and end the poll as well so we can make sure we save that I think that what we're gonna see this gonna change is probably going to be the way home just so shown open houses moving forward that's gonna take probably the longest period of time for us to to make some changes back and get that confidence by sellers that say hey come on everybody come in so we're going to see virtual open houses virtual tours 360 video is going to be the biggest change that we're not gonna see change back okay I appreciate that Rachel you want to chime in and give us something that you see that has changed that's not going to change back you know I think just the the personal awareness of cleanliness I would say maybe on job sites sometimes that's a little more questionable you know what I'm just saying like I don't know how many of you used to Cabos on job sites but they're now well stocked I will see so I don't see that going away and quite honestly I just I feel like there's there's gonna be a more emphasis on on evalute relationships I think just because I think the relationships as we've gone through this together have proven to be very instrumental and I think that's something that's going to continue real quickly well well we have you here Rachel do you do you anticipate that our that we will do a lot of different sourcing for materials moving forward or will we kind of go back and reconnect with those things do you get a feel for that at all you know not at this point I mean those economies are such large scale that I think people would like to maybe look at look at alternatives but I just don't know if they're there yet I think production worldwide has changed and what that looks like in terms of manufacturing in those processes so you know that that will change and how everyone can adapt to that is going to be key okay cool thank you Rachel appreciate it Chuck can you jump in tell us something that has changed in your world that you don't think is going to change that kind of like what les was saying as far as the technology piece you know I in the past over the past few years we've seen an increase in borrowers who are doing online applications you know they want to text for their communication and so there are instances where we haven't seen you know we haven't met them face to face until we get to the closing because everything is electronic I can see Zumbi used a lot more where you have that initial buyer you know consult and instead of over the phone you're having a face-to-face but not necessarily you know not as many you know right in the same office interactions the other thing is like what Jennifer was saying remote notarization I think this is pushing up that timeframe by at least a year you know it's always been there and it's always been talked about but I think this you're going to see a lot more electronic closing starting to happen I'm moderating a call after this with the Iowa mortgage Association and we are having one of the vendors on who is approved through the Secretary of State and is starting to do these remote closings and it's slick and I think that's going to change how how things are done all right there I appreciate that Jeremy I know you're right in the middle of all this what about the things I know you're doing different kinds of appraisals and if you could real quick in your process here can you explain what's a drive-by versus adex desktop versus a traditional because well we're all hearing all these different things and in you know I know you understand so help us understand well full appraisal excuse me full appraisal is just a regular freezer where we're going interior/exterior inspections on the property so that we're getting all the data that we possibly can a drive-by is just what it sounds like is we're going to the property and doing an exterior inspection depending on what's of what's entailed a lot of times oh if it's a big property I'll go do a full exterior inspection and get photos all around the house and then a complete desktop is you're using more less what information you have online and you're not even going out to the property you're just doing a full appraisal based on the data that you find whether it be online or that's provided to you from the homeowner agent or something that nature so I know someone had a question as to are they doing a lot more dry advise or what do you need to do and Chuck can verify that he knows the qualifications as you have but has to be qualified in certain arena to be able to get those drive-by or desktop appraisals your home owner doesn't want appraiser come in there they may not have a choice because they have to qualify to be able to get be able to have a enhanced drive-by or desktop appraisal so we don't have to have contact if they're afraid of having contact from someone from the outside so but outside of that too those are kind of the basics of the text appraisals but something that is not going to change back something that in your world that changed on you and and you don't think it's going back as for appraisers I think appraisers are going to be a lot more cautious as to go on inside properties I think we're gonna most likely try to be safer and respects the possibly wearing gloves or just making sure that we're doing a process that we're getting the data that we need but also we're not whether it be bringing something in or taking some away from someone's house that could affect our livelihood because it's something that there's quite a few appraisers on online that are being affected by this right now because I mean as many appraisals that are going on right now there's a lot of appraisers that have been that have contracted coronavirus because of going into all these homes that that's are getting refined all right well we appreciate that and and stay safe out there I know that's that's a tough job that you've got to do sometimes so with that Jen do you want to chime in here and give us something that you see either that has changed and won't change back or something that you see that you know other than remote notarization because there's something going to change in the future are we going to see floor votes you know online or any of this kind of stuff coming she's muted right now yeah Jen you're muted there you go oh boy this is great okay so what I was saying was I I don't know that we're gonna go to that extreme you know when the legislature is in session it's a public process the public has to be there they have to participate in that process we always want it to be as open as possible and I I don't get any impression from any of our legislators that they think that a remote type of vote in that thing would really work constitutionally you have to make it a public process you know the thing that I'm wondering about that might change and going forward is not to try to be political about it but where does it go with the handshake up there I mean the constituents that come in the hundreds of people will be interested to see that I do anticipate you know that hopefully the Legislature will get to come back in and complete their business whether it be for a couple of days or a week we're not sure and that I don't believe that if I'm a betting person which I am I don't think that they will come in May first as as is right now I think that they will try to find the appropriate time once they know what the budget needs what the budget might look like they will come in for a limited amount of time they had 30 plus days left in the legislative session but when they come back in it will be a short amount of time to get done what they need to get done which is the budget and whether that happens in June or July we don't know but it'll probably be for a very shortened period of time and we also don't know whether any policy will go along with that depending on how many days they have there's a lot of rumors at the Capitol as always but they're saying that they could bundle a bunch of non-controversial bills and still pass those within a day or so we just don't know how it's going to look but we do know for sure that they will at some point probably come in and do that budget so that's a short-term but I don't think it's a long-term change okay thank you and I want to thank each each one of you for taking the time out and offering your expertise I know your time is valuable but soon as the information that you possess and your willingness to share that with the rest of us says something about each one of you so thank you for that with that I'd remind everybody out there that a great source of information you just go to be more calm and on the front page is is sources to go out to NA our route it is ridiculous what NER has available for you out there and the EIU Association you can go there there's a whole QA of Kovan 19 and things that are going on you know I think the video of the of the legal update that we did is out there somewhere there's a lot of stuff I appreciate all of you if there's anything that I can do pick up the phone give me a call I'm available and again thank you so much to all of you less than Chuck Rachel Jeremy and Jennifer I appreciate you and we will we'll talk soon thank you so much for joining us thank you you bet bye bye
