As noted in yesterday’s commentary, mergers and acquisitions of lenders are in the news across the nation. For curious lenders, it is good to have a general guide in how a buyer goes about valuing a lender. I happen to be in rainy Chicago now, but 1,700 miles away, there’s interesting news from the Phoenix area and the desert. How would you appraise a perfectly fine home that had no water? Rio Verde, aptly named Green River, a neighborhood outside of Scottsdale, Arizona, with some 2,000 homes, recently learned that there is not a stable water supply. The 1980s Groundwater Management Act required that in order for a development six lots or larger to proceed in Arizona, it had to secure a 100-year supply of water. The Rio Verde Foothills developers kept splitting parcels into four to five lots, putting them under the six-lot minimum that applied to the law and avoiding that requirement. About 30 percent of the residents now face a dramatic change in price as the city has cut them off from water since the Colorado River level has dropped. In better news, today’s podcast can be found here and this week’s is sponsored by SimpleNexus, an nCino company and homeownership platform unites the people, systems, and stages of the mortgage process into one seamless, end-to-end solution that spans engagement, origination, closing, and business intelligence. Today’s features and interview with Arrive Home’s Tai Christensen on the intersection of Black History Month and the mortgage industry.