Sometimes the wait to close on a new home can be excruciating, and having to wait some more for an appraiser who has to jam yet another home into an already bursting schedule doesn't make things any easier.
The housing market in Minot is booming right along with the oil industry and appraisers, the folks who go out to the homes to determine their worth, have never been busier.
Brent Haaland, owner of Haaland Appraisal Services, said business started picking up for him around two years ago and hasn't slowed down since.
After the housing crisis that began several years ago, several changes were made to the reporting requirements of appraisers' reports, meaning not only do they currently have more houses to appraise, each report also takes longer to complete.
"We've always been relatively busy but it seems like the last couple of years it's probably busier than what it has been prior to that. Some of that is with the housing prices that there is in the majority of the nation, there's been a huge amount of changes in our reporting requirements and the requirements of the lenders as far as in the reports," Haaland said. "And so consequently I think our volume is probably up some as well as each report takes longer to do."
Haaland said right now it's probably close to six weeks before he can get out to appraise a home. He also does many rural properties in the oil patch which take extra time to get to and from.
"We do a fair amount of rural properties ... like say in the Stanley area, New Town and Parshall with all of the oil activity," Haaland said, noting he was actually a bit busier this past summer. "We get a lot of calls to go to Williston just because I think they're farther behind than we are."
The oil boom is definitely having a huge impact on the housing market in northwestern North Dakota, but Haaland said an old standby is also helping out too.
"In my opinion if you look at this area, the way that it appears to me, our farm economy has been relatively strong over the last few years and I mean that's been the strength in this area for years," he said. "If agriculture is doing well, typically the economy in this area is relatively good."
The expansion of Minot Air Force Base is another key Haaland pointed to as a big reason homes in this area are selling like hotcakes.
Jim Szymanski, who owns Northland Appraisal Service, said he's been extremely busy for quite some time.
"This housing boom that we're going through, if you want to call it that, has been going on for several years now at least," Szymanski said.
He tries to keep his waiting list to under a month but sometimes finds that difficult with the wealth of work and the dearth of appraisers in Minot, especially when work he wasn't even expecting comes his way.
"At times we just get overwhelmed because a lot of these appraisal management companies send appraisal orders without asking and we get jammed up a little bit, but generally speaking I would say in town appraisals are 30 days or less, in some cases as little as two weeks," Szymanski said. "It all depends on the complexity of the property."
Although Szymanski has gone through short spurts in the past where he was just as busy as he is now, the long-term consistency of his current workload is something he's never seen before. While he noted the oil industry is playing a part in the current situation, Szymanski also said the current low interest rates are definitely encouraging people to buy new homes or refinance their current ones.
"Lately it's really picked up because the interest rates have dropped so low that there's a lot of refinances Szymanski said. "So it's been very steady and the curve's been upward."
"Interest rates are going down and people are taking advantage of that, plus like I say there's more new construction going on, more people moving into Minot, a lot more activity in the real estate market," he added.
Szymanski said there could be some relief as winter looms closer and the housing market enters its traditional slow period but he pointed back to the interest rates, saying as long as they are low, home sales will remain high.
Gary Weydahl, owner of National Marketing Realtors, agreed it has been a combination of factors that has been keeping all of Minot's appraisers busy.
"The increase in personnel at the Minot Air Force Base has had an impact, and, of course, the oil has had a tremendous impact, bringing more people into the city and they're buying homes," Weydahl said. "In order to get the home financed, they need to be appraised."
Weydahl, who has been appraising homes since 1973, said the current housing boom started around two years ago. Although they are currently running about two to three weeks behind, he said a lender should still have the appraisal on his desk about three weeks after it has been ordered.
"I've heard some other appraisers have been running a little bit further behind but we have the luxury here as a firm, there's bunch of us here so we can spread the work out," said Matt Williamson, an apprentice appraiser with National Marketing Realtors. "Some are four to six weeks. They're just a sole operation, they have nobody to delegate the work to."
The firm has a total of four appraisers.
The last time Weydahl can remember things being this busy was around a decade ago, when interest rates plummeted after having been fairly high.
"We got very, very busy because everyone was refinancing, in addition to home sales," Weydahl said.
In addition to the current attractive interest rates, which Weydahl said are the best he's seen in roughly 40 years, he noted another factor driving people to purchase homes during this most recent boom is the lack of available rental properties around town.
Appraisers haven't been the only ones sent scrambling by the hot housing market. Real estate agents are also having to deal with the long wait for appraisals, which is having a domino effect on closing times for home buyers.
Clyde Thorne, a real estate agent for Coldwell Banker, has noticed wait times for both appraisers and home inspectors increase substantially.
"The work load has gotten so great that the wait time now for them has just really extended our closing times," Thorne said. "Closing times have gone from 30 days to up to 60 days now."
Thorne said he has several clients who have become frustrated with the slow process. He even noted two different homes whose closings were supposed to happen Wednesday that will have to be put off another week because of appraisal delays.
"We're bringing appraisers from out of town now from as far away as Fargo (and) Washburn to do the appraisals on these homes," Thorne said. "And it makes it harder for them because they don't know the Minot market very well."
Jeremy Boyce, broker/owner of Remax, said they have been waiting three to four weeks before an appraiser can look at a piece of property. Three to five years ago that wait was only two weeks, according to Boyce.
The extended wait for an appraiser is in turn extending the time it takes to close, which is causing problems for some customers, Boyce said, particularly those buying residential properties who want to move in as soon as possible.
About two weeks have been added to closing times in Boyce's estimation, bringing the total to five to six weeks. He said the long wait has almost brought some home sales to a screeching halt but so far no sales have been lost.
"Close, but not yet. I should say very close but not yet," Boyce said with a chuckle. "It's been very close but not quite yet and I hope it stays that way."
With so few appraisers in Minot - off the top of his head, Boyce estimates maybe seven or eight - closing on a home in a timely matter has become difficult. He said they have had to bring in an appraiser from Bismarck before because no one in Minot could get to a home sooner.
He said things should ease up in a couple months when winter hits but until then everyone involved in the housing market will have to keep slogging through what has definitely become the dog days of summer.
Blake Krabseth, sales manager at Watne Realtors, said getting appraisals for homes has been difficult for the past 1 1/2 years.
"It got real tight before the end of the (home) tax credit, and then it went kind of back to more normal," Krabseth said. "It used to be two years ago you would write up an offer on a property and you could close it in 30 days. And now I think most of us have found out between appraisers and home inspections that it's safer to go 40 days."
Krabseth pointed out some home closings are still being completed in 30 or 35 days but said it's better to error on the side of caution rather than commit to a shorter closing time and end up disappointing a customer.
He said Watne hasn't had many frustrated customers because they've been up front and honest about the length of closing times. In his estimation, it's far better to close a little later but on schedule than to overpromise and underdeliver.
"I think what started happening, we coached our agents to make sure our customers knew what was going on. There's some things we can't control and so long as the customer knows up front - that's why I told our agents instead of doing them in 30 days like we used to, do them in 40 days," Krabseth said. "You're better off having extra time and get it done early versus the other way."
