Respectfully Julie, having a hand in HVCC is not something most would brag about. THAT more than anything else led to the dilemma you cite in your final line. Tough to put the genie back in the bottle after it escapes. Fortunately, HVCC died the death it should have had the moment it was conceived. More than any other single factor it was HVCC that laid the groundwork for almost ALL of the appraiser/AMC abuses we undergo today. It created plausible deniability in the minds of lenders and until the next giant crash, Congress will not revisit LENDERS appraisal obligations.

Heck, FHFA is pushing AVMs & hedonic regression in lieu of human appraisals.

Want to shut down a bad AMC?

Follow the steps and articles in AB about Coester VMS (& to a lesser degree First American Pace Pro products. Both were fought here.As well as on a more personal level by AGA President Mark Skapinetz who caught Coester redhanded doing things that the courts didn’t condone. Coester is now out of business. It took over 6 years from the time most of us knew they were bad.

If you really believe MyAMC is bad, then document their specific abuses. Also you can include historic abuses of their officers or main people, but the rest of the history you cited re HVCC, etc is irrelevant. The FINDINGS from those periods and who was there is important.

It’s not easy, but it can be done. Look at what eventually happened to OCWEN as an AMC.

Ummm…. I don’t think so Mr. Towery! You BLACKLISTED me after I called your hotline to complain about appraiser pressure from one of your loan officers who called me offensive names and told me I was a problem because I killed his deal. I can’t believe these idiots are allowed to be in business. Following their BLACKLISTING I was recruited by the NY AG’s office, Nicole Gueron, in 2007, to assist in writing the HVCC and asked to testify against Countrywide and Landsafe. They ended up cutting some kind of deal with their office so they were not included in the lawsuit from the NY AG’s office that was Fannie, Freddie, E-Appraise-It, First American and I believe WAMU and lead to the Home Valuation Code of Conduct and eventual Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act of 2010 and Appraiser Independence Rules (AIR). Even the SAFE Act was instituted as a result of their predatory lending behavior but they are still in business, doing their “thing” as MyAMC!!! How do we get rid of the parasites and viruses pervaded the industry at large!!

On 100% Appraisers Group, a member posted owner name and alias along with the history of criminal convictions of an owner alleged to operate spot out of the Philippines.

Folks, bar none my favorite blog is AppraisersBlogs because of the ability to communicate and receive detailed information. Having said that though, we all have to join several other forums.

I urge all appraisers to join 100% Appraisers Group on FaceBook (independents only); and staff or AMC plus all other appraisers at the 1% Appraisers Group on FB. LOTS of relevant news on an ongoing basis.

That solution is an easy one for the bank that wants to use you. Tell them to pay the AMC on a cost-plus basis. If they are only paying a total fee that is C&R with no allowance for an AMC, then they are likely going to have to increase it to around $600-$650 and TELL the AMC that they expect the appraiser to be paid $450 (or whatever is truly C&R in your area).

They have told you they don’t like substandard service they are receiving for $450. Now you have to tell them how much above average service costs and stick to it.

Better than average fees? They BUY THE CORELOGIC FEE Book! They are $100 LOW for Los Angeles area. As for educating them on fees Marlene and I had a very candid discussion. They are fighting her on $400 which would bring them to about 90% of C&R out here (based on OLD rates).

When greed gets in the way of open minds, then they cannot be educated as you suggest Pete.

Some appraisers such as myself are routinely quoting and receiving $550 for non AMC work now.

I’m fair minded. What is the consumer fee, and what is the up front fee from the amc? Do they present the fee, or do you enter that? Want to get better factual info on this ‘fixed margin’ billing approach.

When it comes to working with amc’s, please do take all of the work. I don’t want it.

Building a cartel! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! What a crack up this guy is. Oh yes, we’re price fixing by trying to have honest free market business pricing structures without the influence of non licensed process clerk middle men who have to date billed borrowing consumers hundreds of millions of dollars if not a billion by now, in unearned junk service fees which would otherwise be illegal and land them in jail if they were actual mortgage lenders. Rich, really great trolling, comic relief for the day, fulfilled. Thank you.

No no no, they can’t do that or the jig would be up and they all could no longer create value out of thin air but rather would have to compete by the same terms they all essentially force upon appraisers, which is to compete by price.

What’s your fee and turn time?

The life of an appraiser is rather boring. One really interesting thing lately is to understand what goes around comes around and it’s always insightful to check out the reviews of the disposable work staff for any given amc company.

See employer reviews for MyAMC on kununu

Reviews from MyAMC employees about MyAMC culture, salaries, benefits,…

Negotiating with an amc regarding bringing fees up is a fool’s errand. Either they deal in cost plus billing practice, or they have a financial incentive to assign by fee because they do not return cost savings to borrowing consumers. This particular company on their website says they ‘adhere to a “fixed margin” pricing policy to ensure that vendor quality, not price, drives selection at the transactional level.’ What’s the effective cap on that margin, do tell. Clever, but no.

I’m not doing PR for the company, my only point was that I get about 10 orders a month from these guys and they are great to work with. If you want to jump to conclusions based on your interpretation of an email, that’s fine by me, it means I get more work from a good company.

The term ‘average fee’ is irrelevant if dealing with a company who’s raking a portion of that. If you were to receive an actual customary and reasonable fee by the current recognized legal definition, which is without a third party company being involved, that is the only fee comparison that matters. Do they pay C&R and are you also working with lender direct without amc to have reasonable bearing on that? One doubts the legitimacy of your statement if they have ever in the past decade tried to get C&R out of amc’s because as a rule of thumb, none of the amc’s pay C&R during times of normal or lean distribution of orders. You can check this by simply stating your fee and then simply stating the consumers appraisal services fee. We’ll take it from there.

I will give them a single thumb up for not playing the bidding game, that sure is the worst thing amc’s do. I will take that thumb back if I learn they have appraisers enter their own fees in their system, which of course is amc code speak for we select based on the fee which brings us the most profit, aka the lowest entered appraiser fee. Only if a company has an up front fee, by way of fixed cost plus billing process, can there be a truly fair and balanced rotational distribution of orders. In journalistic terms, your statement is all fluff and no substance.

This website is not a wise place to try and bolster pr for amc companies. Thank you for playing, try again. NEXT!

Everyone here has my permission to copy and paste any articles I write. Now or in the future.

The only thing I ask is that quotes out of context not be used to mislead or misrepresent positions I’ve taken. (You can take portions but please don’t misrepresent them). Attribution is appreciated but NOT required. Use caution though. SOME of what I write could be argued to be actionable in some quarters. You may not want to have those works viewed as your own!

Thanks Ron, I didn’t know there was any interest in doing that.

I AM extremely impressed by their customer service if she is representative.

As I told her though, I’m not at all impressed by either their fee OR the manner in which they are deriving it. My unconfirmed & expressed suspicion was from a corelogic fee analytics summary being sold around the country that seems nothing more than a compilation of low ball amc fees despite claims it isn’t.

I told her I also have extreme reservations about where her firms AI designated members come from. Landsafe, Lenders Link, LSI etc. Not exactly the cream of the crop to offer appraisers as references.

Another concern is WHY MAI’s are focusing on staff and executive positions at national AMCs rather than going out and appraising high rise office buildings; refineries, hospitals, marinas, Amazon style fulfillment centers, shopping centers, apartments, new subdivisions, and complex litigation issues instead of focusing on individual houses, where MAIs have NEVER had any widespread record of credibility, let alone expertise! SFRs are usually a different perceptive thought process than C&I work. While some smaller full service appraisal offices owned by MAIs understand the differences and are able to make the transition, most MAIs that only ‘dabble’ in sfrs have little more than a philosophical understanding of it. A lack of competency so to speak.

Seems like a phenomenal waster of specialty education and talent to be Big Fish in the little pools. Then again, it’s done purely for marketing purposes. The idea being to sell corporate clients on the designation titles as if those individuals were going to be maintaining the actual daily quality control.

Marlene said she’ll keep trying to persuade her employers to raise fees to at least $400. I told her that she’s a few years behind the times for her target. They SHOULD be seeking to raise fees to $500 to $550 or more ($650?) for non complex work to remain competitive with current C&R fee ranges required by many if not most appraisers across the country.

I believe and accept the ‘MyAMC’ claim of great customer service based on speaking with Marlene. That’s about it though. Nothing else about the firm excited me.

If I was you I would try to educate them on fees in your area, as that is really the only thing I think you could have an issue with. All that other stuff is just part of doing biz these days.