Author: Jonathan Miller

TAF spent $1.4 million dollars lobbying over the past four years using the revenue they take in from appraisers… To set the stage of the complete disdain for the appraisal industry and the public trust… In the 2019 TAF 990 Filing, and based on the assumption their compensation has increased in the last three years, the two leaders of TAF, Dave & Kelly, run a 12 employee entity and make a staggering ± $750,000 annually. No wonder they don’t want to accept grant money to enable oversight in a not-for-profit! But it gets worse… TAF spent $1.4 million dollars lobbying...

From the organization that brought you the bat-shit crazy letter and the chickenshit letter, they are charging for classes that are misleading. ASC just sent a letter to state appraiser regulatory officials pointing out that the USPAP update course is factually inaccurate and puts appraisers in legal jeopardy if they follow it. Letter From Jim Park, Director ASC to State Appraiser Regulatory Officials: 2022-2023 7-Hour National USPAP Update Course The letter references findings and recommendations found in the already presented report 6 months ago: Identifying Bias and Barriers, Promoting Equity: An Analysis of the USPAP Standards and Appraiser Qualifications Criteria This is the meat & potatoes...

The results of this 2021 white paper: Appraisal overvaluation: Evidence of price adjustment bias in sales Comparisons co-authored by Frank Nothaft are pretty interesting. At first glance, I get the CoreLogic evil empire stuff, but step back and take it all in. Here’s the abstract. Home appraisal came under scrutiny for contributing to the home-price bubble and enabling the origination of risky mortgages that led to the post-2006 foreclosure crisis. Subsequent regulations tried to minimize or eliminate conflicts of interest and improve valuations. Nonetheless, our study of appraisals completed in 2015 and 2016 find that appraisal bias still occurred. Our...

Why do I take the time to mention “real estate appraisers” and “real estate appraisals?” instead of just “appraisers” and “appraisals”? Personal property appraisers and business appraisers aren’t required by any state to follow USPAP, don’t pay anything for licensing and certification fees to any state, and are not subject matter experts on anything to do with real estate at all, ever. But… the Appraisal Standards Board and Appraiser Qualifications Board are chock a block full of non-real estate appraisers. Didn’t TAF/ASC arise from problems in the real estate profession? Was it ever the intent of the original remit for...

When I read the announcement that Fifth Wall funded a relatively new startup called ALOFT, I and many of my peers were confused on what the value proposition actually is. Backed by a VC, including some of the biggest… In addition to Fifth Wall, Aloft’s backers include VC firms Andreessen Horowitz and MetaProp, Zillow and Pacaso co-founder Spencer Rascoff, Built CEO Chase Gilbert and Doordash executive Gokul Rajaram. …means that this funding is very expensive for ALOFT but they are trying to disrupt a very low-margin industry. I thought of the following acronym translation, not aimed at the management team,...

The current administration is addressing the lack of diversity in housing valuation head-on with the formation of an interagency task force on Property Appraisal and Valuation Equity (PAVE). Here are the details of the PAVE Task Force. They just had their first meeting and this is a serious effort unlike the silliness of TAF’s bureaucratic actions of the past year that were nothing more than window dressing to the lack of diversity problem within the appraisal industry. Incidentally, The Appraisal Foundation is not part of PAVE Task Force. Keep that in mind when you read their bat-shit crazy letter again and think about the fact that...