A Broker Price Opinion or BPO is used to establish the value of a piece of real estate (ie. a house) quickly and inexpensively.

BPO’s are predominantly used during a foreclosure process when an offer of a short sale is in the making.

Lender mitigation departments are dealing now with a ton of short sale requests and need to set a value for the property fast so they can decide to accept or reject the short sale price.

Broker Price Opinion: Cheap and Fast Home Values

Broker price opinions fit the bill in that they can be done in a matter of days and at a cost of about $150.

Rather than contract and pay a bona fide appraiser to establish value they ask a real estate broker in the area to either a “drive by” assessment of value or possibly a more in-depth assessment.

In comparison, an appraiser takes about a week to return a report and cost upwards of $350.

BPO’s Don’t Require Access

Not only that, but the appraiser must gain access to the inside of the house to do his work properly and that could pose problems in a foreclosure scenario.

Even if the home is empty getting the appraiser a set keys is often impossible.

If the home is occupied…well, you can imagine the bank’s representative is probably not welcome.

The report usually contains recently sold comparable properties and at the very least, pictures of the outside of the home.

Either way it is a real estate broker, not an appraiser making the assessment and writing the report.

There is now some growing controversy over BPO’s especially when the broker providing the report may be a party to a short sale transaction or could be influenced by those real estate agents who are a party to the short sale.

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