Category: Snippets

Appraisers don’t use race… Race is NEVER considered during a valuation Last week in a congressional hearing on the future of the appraisal profession, some research was used to suggest appraisers are showing racial bias and essentially undervaluing black neighborhoods. I was not expecting the conversation to go that way during the hearing and I’ll admit I’m deeply concerned about the emerging narrative of appraisers being racists… In the congressional hearing a panelist talked about a study that shows black neighborhoods are devalued by $48,000 compared to otherwise similar white neighborhoods. That’s alarming and society needs to have some serious...

Phil Crawford of Voice of Appraisal sent a “call to action” email to his followers early this week to recommend I provide testimony on this upcoming June 20th panel. As a result, there were hundreds of recommendations sent to the House Financial Services Committee providing why I would be a good candidate to speak on the panel. I was blown away by the support and the professionalism of the emails. I thank you all. The committee told me yesterday that I would not be on the panel but offered other ways to share our views and I was very appreciative...

Maureen Sweeney, my friend and appraiser colleague from Chicago (who knew where the name “Chicago” originated from that I learned when I used to live there), wrote an opus about appraiser liability being created and the race to the bottom. It’s a great read. Spoiler alert: Apps don’t have any judgment, nor does their maker. There are moments in my life when I am glad to have given 12 years of my life to service to the Illinois appraisal community, and being part of the team that was in place when the Illinois AMC laws and rules were written years...

It’s not been a good couple of weeks for CoreLogic, the massive data aggregator of real estate information. It’s been no secret that Corelogic has been steadily amassing all the major real estate data sources and the top MLS platform vendor. In my industry, they purchased the market leader of appraisal software, and many of my peers became wary of some of the software changes that were initiated. CoreLogic (NYSE: CLGX) is one of the largest real-estate data companies in the nation with 4.5 billion records spanning more than 50 years. It operates in North America, Western Europe and Asia Pacific. Here...

An appraiser/reader sends me this text from an XOME appraisal request: Good Morning, The state of NY requires the appraiser to include their invoice in the report. AMC fee does not need disclosed. Please include an invoice in your report when uploading. Thank you” This is technically accurate. Here is an excerpt from the NYS AMC Law: 38 (e) Knowingly fail to separately state the fees paid to an appraiser 39 for appraisal services and the fees charged by the appraisal management 40 company for services associated with the management of the appraisal 41 process to the client, borrower and...

If AMCs weren’t invasive enough already on appraisers personal lives with overly-frequent status calls and other well-documented and demeaning requests, how about vacation time? In addition to the 37-page boilerplate order request the appraiser is required to read, appraisers now have to fill out another form. The fact that Solidifi and their competitors are in business to fee out to the lowest bidder makes this request silly because appraisers don’t have that kind of relationship with AMCs. It goes like this. They send out an appraisal request to 10+ appraisers and one of them is on vacation and therefore doesn’t...

The NY State Coalition of Appraisers wants you to to know that there is a new AMC law coming into effect at the end of the month and REVAA doesn’t like it. Last December New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo signed Senate Bill S9080 into law, effective at the end of this month. REVAA‘s biggest concern is that it requires all valuations to be performed by appraisers AND invoices must be attached to the report so the consumer knows what the appraiser was paid. This is groundbreaking for our industry. Let’s hope that the word spreads and the consumer is...