Author: Jonathan Miller

One of my lifetime best friends is Bart Simpson, who is an actual person. We grew up together from elementary school through high school but went our separate geographic ways to college. My other best friend during that era of my life was Harry Benson, who was also the key character in Michael Creighton‘s early best seller, “The Terminal Man” but that’s another story. Bart taught me how to ski and how to make plexiglass cookbook holders (hey it was the 70s). We spent our weekends riding bicycles everywhere, especially into D.C. on weekends to meticulously go through each of the...

Remember liar loans of a decade ago? Those same people want to do away with appraisers. My friend and appraisal colleague Ryan Lundquist and I authored a petition on change.org to point out the growing reckless behavior that is enveloping the mortgage process. There’s a proposal from the FDIC, Federal Reserve, and Treasury Department not to require appraisals for some mortgages under $400,000. As we say in the petition, this change can impact several groups in particular: consumers, the taxpayers, the housing market and appraisers. One group not explicitly mentioned in the petition but impacted down the road are real estate agents and brokers....

Here’s the math: An appraiser shared an email survey concerning hybrid appraisals. The survey reveals the fees they are thinking of charging. These fees aren’t that different from what I’ve heard elsewhere. It’s actually quite telling on how the AMC/Mortgage Lending industry sees the appraiser’s role in providing a reasonable benchmark on their collateral to make more informed lending decisions. Here’s the scenario – take the $78 national desktop report fee and divide it by the $500 average appraisal fee as quoted by Realtor Magazine. Now think in terms of the inspection versus valuation. valuation expertise is viewed as a...

AI research piece is at best propaganda and at worst, a lie. The following CSBS article essentially written by the Appraisal Institute which is being distributed by lenders – continues to misrepresent the idea that the number of appraisers is falling and no new appraisers are coming into the profession. Notice how CSBS tracks the number of appraisers from the peak of the housing bubble? If this organization’s or the Appraisal Institute’s intentions were honest, they would show the trend before the housing bubble as well. In this piece, they show that credentialed appraisers have fallen 21% in 10 years which is...

Over the past month, I have been writing about SB-70, a California Law that allows appraisers to get a pass and do evaluations on the cheap and not have to verify anything in their appraisals. After all, what MAI or SRA doesn’t want to do an appraisal on the cheap so they can compete with dog-walkers, pool-cleaners, and TV-repairmen? It is what every residential appraiser wants to do because obviously, they can do it better than a septic tank-cleaner or ditch-digger who does evaluations on the side. Appraisersblogs posted my thoughts on this from an earlier Appraisersville post I wrote...