Back to The Basics

…“preaching” about the basics of this industry…

The more I read residential mortgage related appraisals, underwriter comments and comments from the quality assurance departments from major lenders, the more I have come to realize that it is far beyond time to get back to “preaching” about the basics of this industry. For those of you who have been in the business back when you would take the photos, pull it out of the camera, wait a few moments before you pulled the front off the photo before coating it with the “magic wand” to keep it from fading (thank you Polaroid), I would recommend moving on to another post.

But for the so-called experts of residential appraisal, the current brand of underwriters, and quality assurance “experts” that are being paid to “play appraiser, lawyer and industry regulator” please pull up a chair and let’s puzzle through a few of the basic of this business.

First of all, if you are going to challenge the appraisal report, and your basis for this challenge is UAD please understand this, a Uniform Dataset was mandated by Fannie Mae for the purposes of selling the loan packages to Fannie and Freddie. These dataset requirements are important and should be honored by the appraiser; however, there is no actionable items with regard to prosecuting the appraiser.

Secondly, USPAP has been made the law in all fifty states with regard to regulating the appraisal process and how the report should be presented; however, before you wish to challenge an appraisal report using the Standard Rules of this document it is imperative to take a few ethics courses so that you understand the proper use of this document. Standard 1 of USPAP is for the development of the appraisal. It is really difficult to determine if the process has or has not been followed by evaluating the report. Standard 2 was governed the reporting of the appraisal.

This is the first of several posts, the next series will address various sections of the report and presentation that seem to get overlooked more often than others.

Click here for Part II.