Last week, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would direct the Department of Veterans Affairs to allow for desktop appraisals and waivers of appraisals. The bill has yet to be discussed in the Senate.

Why should we care?
The bill, known as the Improving Access to the VA Home Loan Benefit Act of 2022, is a bipartisan effort to overcome a nationwide shortage of appraisers, which particularly affects veterans who bought mortgages through the VA, which has stringent appraiser standards. The new measures can let appraisers complete more reports in a shorter span of time, and is also impactful for people in rural areas, where there is a serious shortage of appraisers. But the bill also keeps the door open for desktop appraisals, which were permitted on a provisional basis at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic; this clear green light from the government may bring some relief to desktop-appraisal proptechs, since they face a cooling housing market. But more crucially, arguably, given the old-school demands that were built into veterans’ home purchase offers, this new bill may let veterans make competitive offers on favorable homes and secure housing more quickly.