Appraisal News and Appraisal Tips For Real Estate Appraisers - Your source for appraisal industry news, appraisers' opinions, and discussions of appraisal issues

Using Discrimination As a Bully Tactic 11

Using Discrimination As a Bully Tactic

As an appraiser who has been appraising in rural south for 20 years I have seen a few things. This wave of discrimination has gotten out of control. Sure, there has been some discrimination going on which is not the norm, but to accuse someone of discrimination because the value came in lower than an expected value is pure asinine. It is not our job to validate lenders and borrowers expected values. I have had very few borrowers get mad, that I am aware of, because my opinion of value was lower than their expected values. I can remember three...

Appraisal Bias Mantra is Largely False Reporting 16

Appraisal Bias Mantra is Largely False Reporting

Just How Commonplace Is Appraisal Bias?  Folks, about the only entity examining in depth the details behind all the allegations about appraisers being inherently biased is the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Housing Center. They are proving that most of the allegations are mostly a dump truck load of bovine substance. Click here for their latest expose. Report: Just How Commonplace Is Appraisal Bias? – theMReport.com Within this report are these statements from AEI: “When comparing appraisals for people of color to those for non-Hispanic white people within the same geographies, a new study by the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) Housing...

Racial Bias Complaint Filed Against Me 47

Seller Filed a Racial Bias Complaint Against Me

So what’s caused the sudden loss of income? Could it be because of the racial bias complaint filed against me by an unhappy Seller…  Fannie Mae accomplished what they set out to do in July 2011, when they initiated their Uniform Appraisal Dataset (UAD) and the Uniform Collateral Data Portal. The goal was to collect enough property data to effectively remove appraisers from the home buying and refinancing process. It all started with Dodd-Frank Act, a several hundred pages Act signed into law by then President Obama, sold to unsuspecting Americans as a protection from the corrupt business practices of...

Agent Management Company 10

Agent Management Company, a Familiar Ring

We will call it “AGENT MANAGEMENT COMPANY”. We will ensure that the use of runners is prohibited…  Public trust. It’s a real thing. It appears that this recent lawsuit that the NAR LOST has exposed antitrust, collusion and price fixing between agents. I am thinking about creating a new AMC. We will call it an “AGENT MANAGEMENT COMPANY”. We will create a buffer per say between the buyers agent and the sellers agent thereby protecting the buyer and seller. We will have a roster of approved agents nationwide. They will be thoroughly vetted. Routinely background checked. Ensure they are fully...

Reality of Today's Appraisal Environment; Discriminatory Falsehood 10

Reality of Today’s Appraisal Environment

Proving discriminatory activity is hard, which is probably one reason HUD is dragging their collective feet in resolving the filed complaints.  The real scourge of what’s been happening to appraisers for the past 5 years (yes, it started prior to the last election) has been revealed by Mr. Isaac Peck, in this article. You really need to read it, perhaps again, if you saw it come through your email on Wednesday October 25. Isaac has allowed me to “re-broadcast” his article. Yes, it’s a ‘sales promotion’ but it contains critical information appraisers need to know about. The first paragraph, contained...

Majority of Reviewers Had Very Limited Field Experience 22

Majority of Reviewers Had Very Limited Field Experience

It was my experience that the majority of reviewers, FNMA included, had very limited field experience. Which is painfully obvious when they request baseless revisions for “more or better comps”.  I’m a Certified General Appraiser that started appraising in 1984, almost 40 years ago! Spent the majority of my career appraising both residential and commercial properties in a major metropolitan market. I had my own appraisal firm for a number of years, prior to the AMC model which dissolved years of relationship building with clients large and small, almost overnight! Like most of you, I really enjoyed appraising and was...

Fannie Mae Filed a Complaint Against Me 39

Fannie Mae Filed a Complaint Against Me

An appraiser shared the following with us which was posted on one of the appraisers’ groups. Fannie Mae filed a complaint against me with my state appraisal board. Here’s what happened. The Report In June of 2021, I completed an appraisal for a conventional purchase. The appraisal was ordered by an AMC on behalf of a lender. At that time, the real estate market was still being wildly affected by the COVID pandemic. Remote work was in full swing, and consumers were desperately seeking to get out of the cities. Prices for all types of residential properties were rising rapidly,...

Fannie's Loan Buyback Sophistry Relies on Modifying Analysts' Behavior 9

Fannie’s Loan Buyback Sophistry Relies on Modifying Analysts’ Behavior

“Many of the repurchase letters make no sense,” said the insider. If analysts don’t write enough defects on those files, they get hammered. If analysts fall short of their peers in “production points,” it’s considered their fault, said the insider.  At the heart of Fannie Mae’s valuation system is a tool that shunts a subset of the millions of loans purchased by the mortgage giant each year into a “high risk” pool. Fannie then pressures and incentivizes a corps of in-house analysts to create further doubt about the loans in order to send repurchase demands to lenders for up to...

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FNMA Continued Effort to Get Rid of Appraisers

Fannie Mae Continues Their Effort To Get Rid Of Appraisers: Sends “Tips” For the past year, Fannie Mae has sent unsigned complaints to state appraisal boards; when they see something they don’t like, they write it up and send it to the state. In their recent newsletter, this effort is called “Tips.” They emphasize they are not automated: LQC reviews are not automated. Our expert analysts validate the appraisal results by asking questions like “Do the comparable sale selections make sense?”, “Is the data accurate?”, “Did the appraiser make appropriate adjustments?” and “Are we getting the most probable value?” in...

Mortgage Application Volume Nearing Historic Low 32

Mortgage Application Volume Nearing Historic Low

Appraisers, I’m almost reluctant to distribute this article, but the reality is what it is. Per the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), the loan application volume is at another low point in our history. The article in Mortgage News Daily titled “Mortgage Application Volume at Lowest Levels Since 1996” in this link provides context. For a related perspective, the article contains a graph, which can be expanded to show mortgage rates and application volume for decades. The brown line in the graph shows 30 year mortgage rates – since early 1971. The light blue indicates the loan application volume, which corresponds...

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