How long are appraisals and their values “good for”?
From a lender’s perspective, six months to a year is about the shelf life of an appraisal. The accurate answer is about 24 hours. A good example is what happened on September 11, 2001. When our nation was shook to the core, our local real estate economy staggered as well. I reviewed several appraisals that I had completed from September 1st-10th of that year and found looking back, that while the original values were fair and accurate based on the current data available, the reality was there was a significant loss in value based solely on the aftermath of the bombings, and the effect they had on our local market, and had absolutely nothing to do with the actual properties themselves.
