Category: Appraisal News

Appraisal news and appraisal tips for real estate appraisers – Your source for appraisal industry news, appraisers’ opinions, and discussions of appraisal issues

Systemic Failures in FHA Appraisal and Loan Review 18

Systemic Failures in FHA Appraisal and Loan Review

This case exposed the cracks in an FHA system where failures by the lender, the AMC, and the review process aligned in ways that no borrower could have anticipated. It shows how easily an appraisal error can escalate when every safeguard designed to prevent harm breaks down at the same time. When the first article about this case ran on July 15, 2024, it already raised serious concerns about how an FHA appraisal could miss something as basic as the type of water and sewer service. What has emerged since then paints a much larger picture, one that shows how...

AMC / Appraisal / Appraisal Management Companies / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Federal Housing Administration

Bias Accusation Collapses as HUD Clears the Appraiser 48

Bias Accusation Collapses as HUD Clears the Appraiser

HUD just confirmed what the appraisal showed from day one: the accusation never had a pulse.  If you read the original article about Steve Orlowski, the Illinois appraiser dragged through a multi year circus over a baseless bias allegation, you probably walked away thinking that surely this nightmare had to end at some point. The state had already taken its shot, the facts were already sitting in plain view, and nothing in the report supported the accusation. But as every appraiser knows, once a complaint enters the system, it tends to move forward on momentum alone, even when the foundation...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / HUD / The US Department of Housing and Urban Development / Trending

Pickleball, Promises, and the Quiet Takeover of Appraisal 36

Pickleball, Promises, and the Quiet Takeover of Appraisal

While they’re busy flexing their pickleball paddles, the real play is a bill quietly strip‑mining appraisers’ work. “Fair warning, we take our pickleball as seriously as we take our appraisal tech.” That showed up in my inbox this week as part of a promotion for the Appraiser’s Conference and Trade Show 2026. Smiling emojis, rally invites, reminders to book meetings with onboarding teams and partnership managers, all wrapped in a message about staying ahead of what’s next. I have been in a slowdown for four years now, so when something like that comes across my screen, it lands differently. A...

AMC / Appraisal / Appraisal Management Companies / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Trending

Flags Over Facts: The Road to Obsolescence 59

Flags Over Facts: The Road to Obsolescence

The latest round of modernization comes wrapped in friendly language, but the flags are hard to miss if you’ve been paying attention.  For years, appraisers have been warning that the mortgage industry was slowly engineering us out of the process. We were told we were paranoid. Resistant to change. Stuck in the past. Then the newest Mortgage Credit Executive Order arrived, and the appraisal section opened with a single line that confirmed everything we’ve been saying: expand AVMs, desktops, hybrids, and AI. That’s the priority. Everything else in that section is just polite filler wrapped around a strategy to shrink...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisal Organizations / Appraisal Software / Appraisal Subcommittee / Appraisers News

A Baseless Bias Claim Turns Into a State Appraisal Crusade 30

A Baseless Bias Claim Turns Into a State Appraisal Crusade

This is the story of how a false bias allegation became the basis for an aggressive, unjustified prosecution by the state appraisal board.  My name is Steve Orlowski, and I am a retired Illinois Certified Residential Real Estate Appraiser. In November 2020, I conducted a property appraisal. The owner deemed my value low by more than $100,000. He only complained to the State of Illinois Department of Real Estate and filed a racism complaint with HUD; he didn’t submit a reconsideration of value. Following an informal hearing, the State of Illinois Appraisal Board required me to acknowledge my wrongdoing, complete...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisal Organizations / Appraisers News / IDFPR / Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation

Suspended: The AMC That Turned Review Into a Value Demand 36

Suspended: The AMC That Turned “Review” Into a Value Demand

Financial Asset Services and its chief appraiser did not just cross the line of appraiser independence, they marched past it so boldly that the Virginia Board suspended them both. In a rare twist involving a reverse mortgage, the push for a lower value became so aggressive that the Board ultimately issued a second suspended license to drive the point home.  The Virginia Coalition of Appraiser Professionals recently highlighted a case that should make every appraiser pause. Financial Asset Services (FAS) was hired to manage a reverse mortgage appraisal, a product where the pressure often runs in the opposite direction. Instead...

AMC / Appraisal / Appraisal Management Companies / Appraisal News / Appraisal Organizations / Appraisers News

The Trainee Inside the Fast and Cheap Model 32

The Trainee Inside the Fast and Cheap Model

The trainee walked into a job expecting mentorship and instead found a crash course in misconduct.  There is a widening gap in this industry between the people who actually protect the public trust and the people who only talk about it. A recent Reddit post from a Georgia trainee captured that gap with uncomfortable clarity. Not because his experience was unusual, but because it showed exactly what happens when the demand for fast and cheap collides with a profession built on accuracy, accountability, and real judgment. The trainee described a year of being sent out alone to inspect properties, told...

AMC / Appraisal / Appraisal Management Companies / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Trending

From Dealerships to AMCs: Tech Fees as the New Normal 45

From Dealerships to AMCs: Tech Fees as the New Normal

Tech fees have spread so far and wide that even my oil change felt like a crash course in AMC logic. Last year I went to the dealership for a simple oil change. Nothing dramatic. I was prepared to drink bad waiting room coffee, scroll my phone, and leave. Instead, the service rep came out with the classic “while we had it up on the lift” routine and told me I needed new brakes. Fine. I approved the $1,200 estimate. Not fun, but expected. When the work was done, I went to pay and noticed a mysterious $60 surcharge added...

AMC / Appraisal / Appraisal Management Companies / Appraisal News / Appraisal Technology / Appraisers News

The AMCs: Coming Soon to a Lawsuit Near You 55

The AMCs: Coming Soon to a Lawsuit Near You

The AMCs built an entire system on silence, and now the quiet parts are being said out loud. For years, the mortgage industry has insisted that appraisal management companies are the guardians of independence, the compliance buffer that keeps lenders and appraisers at a safe distance. Yet 2025 has delivered a storyline that feels more like satire than industry narrative. Borrowers are suing, judges are listening, and the AMC business model is beginning to look less like a safeguard and more like a very expensive middleman with a very opaque invoice. The first shock came from California, where the Timmins...

AMC / Appraisal / Appraisal Management Companies / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / CFPB

From Data to Value: How Mass Appraisal Delivers Fair Market Assessments  7

From Data to Value: How Mass Appraisal Delivers Fair Market Assessments 

Behind every annual notice of assessments is a complex valuation system most property owners never realize exists. The Appraisal Foundation defines mass appraisal as “the systematic appraisal of groups of properties as of a given date using standardized procedures and statistical testing.” In practice, mass appraisal is a method used to value large numbers of similar properties at the same time consistently. Properties may be grouped by physical characteristics, location, or property type. Mass appraisal is mostly used for ad valorem (property tax) assessments. Mass Appraisal in Henrico County To understand how mass appraisal functions in practice, it is helpful to look at how the process is applied at...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice / USPAP

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