Coffee chat with a lender made me see parking ratios different

Last Tuesday a loan officer told me his appraiser cuts 15% off any flex building under 3.5 spaces per 1,000 feet, and now I can't stop second-guessing every deal I've toured in Denver since, has anyone else run into that kind of parking penalty on appraisals?

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the_anthony24d ago

Wait, isn't that kind of like how every contractor I've ever talked to has their own secret rule about what makes a house "unfinishable" or a roof "too steep" for a fair price? It's the same pattern everywhere: people in the lending or inspecting world carry around these rigid little formulas they picked up from one bad deal years ago, and then they apply them like gospel to every single property they see. One guy had a bad experience with a flex space with tight parking, and now every building under 3.5 spaces gets automatically punished, no matter if it's in a dense urban spot where nobody drives or a suburban one where people need two spots. I've seen it with apartment complexes and pool sizes, or office buildings with weird ceiling heights. These cutoffs aren't based on real demand, they're just lazy shortcuts that stick in people's heads. The craziest part is once one appraiser writes that number down, every other appraiser in the market sees it and copies it, so it becomes like a fake law of physics. Kinda like how everybody suddenly decided a 2.5% cap rate was "the" number in Denver a few years back, and now we're all stuck with that too. So yeah, that 15% cut is probably real, but it's also probably more about herd thinking than actual value, and I'd bet if you pushed back with good comps, you could get it adjusted.