Monthly Archive: April 2021

REDFIN How Dare You! Reckless Dishonesty, Deception, & Misinformation 11

REDFIN How Dare You!

The following Redfin article is exceptionally offensive to everyone in the real estate business and related sectors, who actually know what they are talking about, to people that are not racists, and who are offended at being falsely called racists directly or by inference. Redfin Study: Homes in Black Neighborhoods Are Undervalued by an Average of $46,000 | Redfin Press Center REDFIN executives ought to know better than to permit their name to be associated with such levels of reckless dishonesty, deception, and misinformation. Hopefully, the marketplace will ‘reward’ them appropriately. Pay attention to the statements “after adjusting” for all...

FHA Temporary Partial Waiver - Actual Reasoning & Directive 2

FHA Temporary Partial Waiver

FHA Appraisers, on April 26, 2021, FHA issued this Temporary Partial Waiver, which is active for one year. This temporary partial waiver is effective for the 12-month period between April 26, 2021, and April 26, 2022. It is found in FHA INFO #21-25 April 27, 2021: Temporary Partial Waiver of the requirements of the single Family Housing Policy Handbook 4000.1 Section II.D.4.c.iii.(F)(2) Required Analysis and Reporting that the Appraiser must include, analyze and report a minimum of two active listings or pending sales on the appraisal grid (in addition to at least three recently settled sales) in an Increasing Market...

Appraising Madoff... Thankfully No Tears Are Shed For Him 5

Appraising Madoff

It was a bit surprising how little attention was paid to the announcement of Madoff’s death in prison. Good. His returns were amazingly linear and there were a number of people that kept calling out the ponzi but he was close with regulators. Because my firm is located in NYC, we’ve ended up doing appraisals in matters related to the post-Madoff tragedy/cleanup. All those people who trusted in him that had their finances destroyed – still hard to process. In the aftermath, we appraised the properties of his wife, brother, both of his sons (the apartment where one sons committed...

Truisms - Taxes, Death... and Anti-Bias Training - Appraisers Blogs 8

Truisms – Taxes, Death… and Bias Training

…other states will also modify their appraisal license renewal CE class requirements to include some form of anti-bias training… Folks, I attended the ACTS Conference in Bay St. Louis, MS, sponsored by National Association of Appraisers, last week. While there, enjoying the interactions of ~150 attendees, a primary topic of conversations and presentations was the impending impact to appraisers regarding anti-bias training and bias attitudes. The onslaught of negative news articles, and legislation at state and federal venues was a direct result of the ‘hijacking’ of the Congressional Hearing in 2019 which was supposed to focus on “Appraisal Modernization.” Instead,...

CPA Is Not Banned from Performing Services He's Qualified. Why Are We? 11

Why Are Appraisers Banned?

I just got out of an interesting conversation I had with my CPA. Eventually, our conversation veered onto the topic of work. I was curious about what it takes to get into his field (not that I’m interested in getting into it at all). We talked about our respective professions and about changes occurring in the real estate appraisal field. We got into talking about what it means to be a CPA, which is different than being an accountant. A CPA is an accountant, but an accountant isn’t always a CPA. He said anyone can hang up a shingle and...

Appraisal Waivers Explosion 10

Appraisal Waivers Explosion

For all the talk about how important appraisers are to risk management by the GSEs, we really aren’t. There is a compelling blog post using AEI data by Ryan Lundquist over at Sacramento Appraiser Blog. Appraisal waivers have really exploded in recent years – especially during the pandemic. But how many are there exactly? Let’s look at actual numbers to walk away with some perspective. These stats are from January 2021 from AEI. QUICK SUMMARY: 47.4% of all Freddie Mac loans had a waiver 44.5% of all Fannie Mae loans had a waiver Waivers are far more common during refinances...

Amrock Mandatory Diversity Training 25

Amrock Mandatory Diversity Training

An appraiser shared the following with us. Amrock is requiring all appraisers on their panel to complete a diversity, equity and inclusion training by April 19, 2021. Amrock Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Training Requirement: You’re Cordially Required to Take Part in This Training Hello, As an organization, we firmly believe in the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) for everyone – and we’ve taken a stance through the implementation of our DE&I Strategic Plan. As part of that plan, all Amrock team members have completed an online Cultural Competency Training. We’re now extending that requirement to all our Amrock...

Political Correctness Speech Prohibitions - Appraisers Blogs 5

Political Correctness

If not for all the Political Correctness speech prohibitions, I could earn a living as a comedian off my family tree stereotypes alone!… One of the saddest things about Political Correctness is that we lost the ability to laugh at ourselves, including our racial stereotypes. One of my old diving partners was black, and he and I could tease each other. No, “N-word” wasn’t part of it, but things like him saying CP Time, etc. were ok and also white stereotypes were fair game. I keep waiting for some of my less restrained speech to get me labeled as a...

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