Author: Jonathan Miller

Let's Have Bank Employees Make Numbers Up! ND Waiver Request 6

ND Requesting a Waiver for Five Years!

The Most Important Issue Facing The Appraisal Industry RIGHT NOW If you thought the answer was the House “modernization” panel discussion that occurred in front of the House Financial Services Committee this week you were wrong. The state of North Dakota is attempting to obtain another waiver request, not the laughably written request of last summer. Now North Dakota is requesting a waiver for five years! From the Federal Register The request seeks a waiver of appraiser credentialing requirements for appraisals for federally related transactions under $500,000 for 1-to-4 family residential real estate transactions and under $1,000,000 for agricultural and commercial real...

Let's Focus on the Public Trust - Trust is Hard To Win Back 7

Let’s Focus on the Public Trust

Banking still hasn’t recovered from the financial crisis using this metric. History is repeating itself right now with the “modernization” movement – code word for “automated valuation” using abysmally unreliable technology. “Trust” is Hard To Win Back Trust is a wildly important asset to have in the banking industry. They violated the public trust during the housing bubble and have worked hard but still haven’t reach pre-bubble trust levels. Let this be a lesson to Appraisal Management Companies, Mortgage Lenders, GSEs and Regulators who are currently working hard to undermine consumer trust again through the mortgage valuation process in order...

AMCs the Single Reason for Higher Appraisal Costs & Reduced Quality 35

A Review of the Appraisal Industry

Phil Crawford of Voice of Appraisal sent a “call to action” email to his followers early this week to recommend I provide testimony on this upcoming June 20th panel. As a result, there were hundreds of recommendations sent to the House Financial Services Committee providing why I would be a good candidate to speak on the panel. I was blown away by the support and the professionalism of the emails. I thank you all. The committee told me yesterday that I would not be on the panel but offered other ways to share our views and I was very appreciative...

Appraiser Maureen Sweeney Makes It Clear...You Sign It, You Buy It 19

You Sign It, You Buy It

Maureen Sweeney, my friend and appraiser colleague from Chicago (who knew where the name “Chicago” originated from that I learned when I used to live there), wrote an opus about appraiser liability being created and the race to the bottom. It’s a great read. Spoiler alert: Apps don’t have any judgment, nor does their maker. There are moments in my life when I am glad to have given 12 years of my life to service to the Illinois appraisal community, and being part of the team that was in place when the Illinois AMC laws and rules were written years...

Antitrust And Corelogic - On the Hot Seat - Appraisers Blogs 41

Antitrust And Corelogic

It’s not been a good couple of weeks for CoreLogic, the massive data aggregator of real estate information. It’s been no secret that Corelogic has been steadily amassing all the major real estate data sources and the top MLS platform vendor. In my industry, they purchased the market leader of appraisal software, and many of my peers became wary of some of the software changes that were initiated. CoreLogic (NYSE: CLGX) is one of the largest real-estate data companies in the nation with 4.5 billion records spanning more than 50 years. It operates in North America, Western Europe and Asia Pacific. Here...

Why is XOME Asking Appraisers not to Disclose the AMC Fee? 28

Appraisers Not to Disclose AMC Fee?

An appraiser/reader sends me this text from an XOME appraisal request: Good Morning, The state of NY requires the appraiser to include their invoice in the report. AMC fee does not need disclosed. Please include an invoice in your report when uploading. Thank you” This is technically accurate. Here is an excerpt from the NYS AMC Law: 38 (e) Knowingly fail to separately state the fees paid to an appraiser 39 for appraisal services and the fees charged by the appraisal management 40 company for services associated with the management of the appraisal 41 process to the client, borrower and...

Solidifi Wants Insight into your Vacation Time, Treating Vendors Like Cattle 36

There is NO RELATIONSHIP

If AMCs weren’t invasive enough already on appraisers personal lives with overly-frequent status calls and other well-documented and demeaning requests, how about vacation time? In addition to the 37-page boilerplate order request the appraiser is required to read, appraisers now have to fill out another form. The fact that Solidifi and their competitors are in business to fee out to the lowest bidder makes this request silly because appraisers don’t have that kind of relationship with AMCs. It goes like this. They send out an appraisal request to 10+ appraisers and one of them is on vacation and therefore doesn’t...

Protect Appraisal Report Integrity By Delivering Locked PDFs 11

Protect Appraisal Report Integrity

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...

NY AMC Law Sends Shockwaves Through AMCs - Appraisers Blogs 21

NY AMC Law Sends Shockwaves

Back on April 19th, I wrote about the New York AMC law in my Housing Notes newsletter. After years of AMCs chipping away at the public trust, the New York AMC law was designed to protect the consumer. The bill summary was: Relates to the registration of real estate appraisal management companies or an individual or business entity that provides appraisal management services to creditors or to secondary mortgage market participants including affiliates by the department of state. Last week, AppraisersBlogs ran it as a standalone post and I got a lot of feedback. To be clear, the bill was...

REVAA Doesn't Like New NY AMC Law 50

REVAA No Fan of the New NY AMC Law

The NY State Coalition of Appraisers wants you to to know that there is a new AMC law coming into effect at the end of the month and REVAA doesn’t like it. Last December New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo signed Senate Bill S9080 into law, effective at the end of this month. REVAA‘s biggest concern is that it requires all valuations to be performed by appraisers AND invoices must be attached to the report so the consumer knows what the appraiser was paid. This is groundbreaking for our industry. Let’s hope that the word spreads and the consumer is...

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