Category: Snippets

Obviously, it is easy to unlock a pdf report, but we lock every report as an effort to maintain report integrity. This should be a regulatory requirement. Periodically we have seen reports we delivered electronically that ended up being modified to the client’s needs. This almost happened a week ago. My firm received this request from Servicelink on a BoA request. In accordance with the new AMC law in New York State, we are including the invoice with our reports. This was the first report to this particular BOA group since the new law was activated so it is reasonable to assume...

The Appraisal Institute-pushed SB-70 law I talked about a while back has been in effect since January 1, 2019 and expires December 31, 2019. I just checked back in since it went into effect and was shocked to see this warning on the California’s Bureau of Real Estate Appraisers web site say this: The real estate appraisal process concludes with the appraiser’s opinion of value. Development of an appraisal includes the gathering of facts and evidence, using recognized methods and techniques of analysis, and applying reasoning and judgement. An Appraisal Report is a summary communication of this process and includes the data, relevant evidence,...

What if you don’t want to do desktop bifurcated appraisals or the very tough appraisals that don’t work for AVMs? Or, wait, once again, for the lender market to finally come back. There are many forces trying to get field appraisers out of doing full valuations for mortgage loans. Automation and Artificial Intelligence will increase this trend, as it has done in other professions. For example, Quicken dramatically decreased demand for manual bookkeepers. Once lenders can determine which properties will work with an AVM, there will be fewer human appraisals. Recently, several appraisers emailed and called me saying their non-lender...

An appraiser sent me the following email. It has become clear to me that the valuation industry that engages appraisers now places more value on the physical inspection than it does the actual valuation itself. Why? They can’t replicate the interior inspection so the valuation portion is where the fee shaving occurs and believe they can come up with the value themselves or find people that will work for wages that won’t attract people who are competent, but rather, people that are desperate. [Bold for emphasis] Hello, You are receiving this email because you have expressed interest in completing desktop...

As I wrote recently, we learned a lot about both our industry and ourselves in 2018. We do provide an invaluable service to the lending community even though most of the mortgage industrial complex doesn’t appreciate or want it, largely because of the moral hazard generated by the taxpayer bailouts of 2008. Our expertise will be shifting to the consumer in the near term with some snapback to mortgage work after this all ends badly in the not so distant future. We just can’t sit around and wait for it. As was said in the movie “The Shawshank Redemption” we...

Some thoughts about what we learned from 2018 to apply to 2019: We have always been our own worst enemy as evidenced by the behavior of AI National who kept thinking up initiatives for its members without asking for membership feedback – remember this when their “taking” initiative is attempted in 2019. Through Appraiserfest and a vibrant appraisal coalition network, we are learning to fend for ourselves and find we all actually like each other. State level political action was the battleground as AI National’s Scott DeBiasio continued to work hard for AI National to further devalue our profession with...