Home appraisals are produced for millions of residential mortgage transactions each year, but appraised values are rarely below the purchase contract price: Some 30% of appraisals in our sample are exactly at the home price (with less than 10% of them below it). We lay out a basic theoretical framework to explain how appraisers' incentives within the institutional framework that governs mortgage lending lead to information loss in appraisals (that is, appraisals set equal to the contract price). Consistent with the theory, we observe a higher frequency of appraisal equal to contract price and a higher incidence of mortgage default at loan-to-value boundaries (notches) above which mortgage insurance rates increase. Appraisals appear to be less informative for default risk measurement compared with automated valuation models.

Home appraisals are produced for millions of residential mortgage transactions each year, but appraised values are rarely below the purchase contract price. We argue that institutional features of home mortgage lending cause much of the information in appraisals to be lost: some 30 percent of recent appraisals are exactly at the home price (with less than 10 percent below it). We lay out a novel, basic theoretical framework to explain how lenders' and appraisers' incentives lead to information loss in appraisals (that is, appraisals set equal to the contract price). Such information loss is more common at loan-to-value boundaries where mortgage insurance rates increase and appears to be associated with a higher incidence of mortgage default, after controlling for pertinent borrower and loan-level characteristics. Appraisals do, in some cases, improve default risk measurement, but they are less informative than automated valuation models. An important benefit of appraisals reported below the contract price is that they help borrowers renegotiate prices with sellers.