The term “Retro” makes a lot of people think of the 1970s. For real estate agents doing BPOs, “Retro” has a completely different meaning.

Simply put, a Retro BPO is a Broker’s Price Opinion (BPO) that asks the real estate agent to give their opinion of a property’s value on a specific date in the past. It may seem strange, but it is a useful tool that will be explained in this article.

Here’s an example of how a Retro BPO works: A bank or lender needs to know how much a property was worth on 7/3/2006. They don’t want to know the value of the property today, they want to know the value as of 3/7/2006. The real estate agent needs to access their MLS program and look up comparable sales from that time period. The real estate agent will state that TODAY is 7/3/2006. For most broker price opinions, the lender wants an agent to go back in time, up to 6 months for comparable sales. With a retro BPO, the agent will look back 0-6 months from the retroactive date, in this case 7/3/2006. The real estate agent will look at the comparable sales from 3/1/2006 to 3/7/2006 in this example.

sales from before 01/03/2006 will probably need a more detailed explanation of why the agent had to go back so far to get comparable sales. In addition, any comparable sale dated after 07/03/2006 will be rejected because they fall after the retroactive date given.

super simplicity

Carrying out a Retro BPO is very simple. Photos are not normally required. The real estate agent will need to physically verify that the property is still standing, in most cases. The actual Retro BPO form is also less complicated than a standard in-house BPO. This is because there are typically no competitive listings involved like in a normal inland BPO. Only 3 comparable sales, no photos. What could be more easy?

What is the reason for a Retro BPO? There are several reasons – reason #1 is to determine if fraud (mortgage and/or appraisal fraud) has been committed. Some other reasons include probate, divorce, bankruptcy, and insurance. In some cases, a bank will use this as a “check” to make sure their processes/procedures have been followed.

Whatever the reason, retro BPOs serve an important purpose in today’s volatile real estate environment. For real estate agents looking for additional income, doing Retro BPO is a good way to go.

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