Title: Attribute (Mis) Reporting and Appraisal Bias

Speaker：Chun Kuang，University of International Business and Economics

Time: 13:30 – 15:00, 10 June, 2021 (Beijing Time, GMT+8)

On Zoom

Zoom ID：9316789264

Password：790971

About the speaker

Chun (KC) Kuang is an assistant professor at the School of Banking and Finance at the University of International Business and Economics. Before joining UIBE in 2019, KC was an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at East Carolina University for three years. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the George Washington University in 2016. KC's research spans across the fields of urban economics, real estate finance, and corporate finance. She has published in Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Industrial Economics, Journal of Regional Science, and Journal of Corporate Finance.

Abstract

This paper identifies a previously undocumented channel through which appraisal bias occurs. We assemble a property-level panel of appraiser reported attributes associated with 3.5 million loan applications from 2013 to 2017 to test whether attributes were consistently reported. We find that 98% of properties had at least one-of-seven attributes inconsistently reported, and that errors were consistent with systematic misreporting to inflate valuations. Our strongest evidence of purposeful misreporting is when an appraiser inconsistently reported attributes of the same comparable transaction selected to value different properties. We estimate that highly leveraged borrowers whose appraisals had inconsistently reported attributes were 6-to-15% more likely to become seriously delinquent in their loan payments.