Category: Appraisers News

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

“No Name” Licenses, No Accountability: From Highways to Housing 11

“No Name” Licenses, No Accountability: From Highways to Housing

Two fatal crashes, one in Florida and one in California, have reignited national concern over so-called “no name” commercial driver’s licenses issued to foreign nationals without lawful immigration status. According to reports, truckers and government officials are sounding the alarm. Some states are allegedly issuing CDLs without verifying full legal names, allowing individuals with unverifiable identities or even criminal records to operate 80,000-pound trucks on public roads. This is not just a transportation issue. It is a systemic warning. The same structural failures that enable “no name” CDLs are now surfacing in the real estate and mortgage industries. Property data...

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

The 24-Hour Appraisal Funded by Appraisers 36

The 24-Hour Appraisal Funded by Appraisers

The 24-hour appraisal model runs on borrowed time and borrowed credibility. Guess who’s underwriting both.  Reggora’s “24-hour appraisal” pitch was flimsy from the start, and now that we’ve seen the fine print, it’s not innovation, it’s a liability handoff wrapped in buzzwords. Their shiny new “Streamlined Appraisal” is just another hybrid, bifurcated product dressed up to look like progress. And like most hybrids, it assumes appraisers are either desperate, asleep, or willing to sign off on someone else’s work for peanuts. Brian Zitin proudly explains that Reggora sends a property data collector to the home before the borrower even commits...

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

App-solutely Clueless: When Sales Tries to School Appraisers 27

App-solutely Clueless: When Sales Tries to School Appraisers

A newly funded bias-checking app claims to fix appraisal discrimination, by sidelining appraisers, duplicating existing standards, and redefining valuation from the sales floor.  Appraisers, this bit of news about a new bias checking app fluttered across my office floor the other day, causing me to trip. From the article: “…eliminate home appraisal bias, which happens when Black homeowners’ properties or properties in predominately Black neighborhoods are valued less than comparable properties owned by white households or in primarily white neighborhoods.” This new electronic theoretical bias checker was developed by three women in Philadelphia, who ARE NOT appraisers. Instead, they are...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Trending

When Appraisers Rally: Korea’s Protest Is a Wake-Up Call for the U.S 24

When Appraisers Rally: Korea Sends the U.S. a Wake-Up Call

In Seoul, appraisers didn’t write op-eds. They didn’t file quiet complaints. They rallied. And Korea took notice. On September 29, the Korea Association of Property Appraisers (KAPA) staged a public protest outside KB Kookmin Bank’s headquarters, condemning the bank’s in-house collateral valuations as illegal under Korea’s Appraisal Act. The Ministry of Land had already ruled the practice unlawful, yet banks continued hiring internal appraisers to fast-track high-value loans. KAPA’s response? Signs, speeches, and a full-throated demand for accountability. Meanwhile, in the United States, appraisers face a quieter, but no less existential, threat. Not just from the GSEs, but from banks...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Automated Valuation Models / AVM / Fannie Mae - Freddie Mac

NAR Calls Out Unregulated Middlemen: A Wake-Up Call for FHFA 37

NAR Calls Out Unregulated Middlemen: A Wake-Up Call for FHFA

When unregulated middlemen run the show, appraisers get ghosted, consumers get duped, and regulators get a velvet-gloved slap from NAR.  In a housing market that demands clarity, Appraisal Management Companies, or AMCs, continue to operate like the magician’s assistant, always present, rarely transparent, and somehow still part of the act. But the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) just handed the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) a letter that reads less like a polite memo and more like a velvet-gloved slap. It’s a bold call to rein in AMC antics and restore dignity to the appraisers who keep the system honest....

AMC / Appraisal / Appraisal Management Companies / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Customary & Reasonable Fees

How Bureaucratic Overreach Turned Real Estate Appraisers into Scapegoats 26

How Bureaucratic Overreach Turned Real Estate Appraisers into Scapegoats

This is what bureaucratic overreach looks like: a maze of rules with no exit, a hearing held while you’re hospitalized, a lawsuit dismissed but still billed. Bureaucratic overreach isn’t a policy flaw, it’s a strategy.  If you’re a real estate appraiser in 2025, odds are you’ve already met Kafka. Not in a literature class, but in your inbox, via a letter from HUD, a complaint from a borrower, or a summons from a regulatory agency that’s decided your opinion of value is now a civil rights issue. The federal government isn’t just investigating appraisers, it’s industrialized the process. Hundreds of...

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

A Review of MEIN COMP: The Last Appraiser 33

A Review of MEIN COMP: The Last Appraiser

If Orwell moonlighted as an appraiser, and Kafka had a side hustle in compliance, “MEIN COMP: The Last Appraiser” by David Samnick would be their love child. But this isn’t dystopian fantasy, it’s a forensic autopsy of a profession that was methodically dismantled while regulators smiled, and algorithms sharpened their knives. Samnick’s book is fiction the way a courtroom sketch is fiction. The names are changed, but the faces are familiar, and the tactics are real. Through a cast of fictional appraisers, each representing a phase in the slow-motion collapse of independent valuation, we witness the insertion of middlemen, the...

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

The 24-Hour Appraisal Diet: Slim on Time, Light on Credibility 31

The 24-Hour Appraisal Diet: Slim on Time, Light on Credibility

Brian Zitin’s declaration that the appraisal “bottleneck” has been obliterated by Reggora’s 24-hour turnaround reads less like a breakthrough and more like a tech startup’s victory lap around a profession it barely understands. According to the post, decades of valuation nuance, regulatory compliance, and boots on the ground expertise have now been solved, at no extra cost to the borrower, in every location, and without compromising standards. All it took, apparently, was a few million dollars and a launch video. It’s a bold claim, not because speed isn’t desirable, but because speed without substance is just marketing. The idea that...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisal Technology / Appraisers News / Automated Valuation Models / AVM

The Town With No Bank: How Rural America Lost Its Mortgage Lifeline 10

The Town With No Bank: How Rural America Lost Its Mortgage Lifeline

For decades, we’ve been told that the problem is demand. That people don’t want to live in rural America anymore. That lending dried up because the buyers disappeared. That it’s just the market working as it should. But what if we’ve been telling the wrong story? Because when you look closely, when you actually follow the data, the decisions, and the people left behind, it turns out rural America didn’t walk away from mortgage credit. Mortgage credit walked away from rural America. The Collapse of Local Lending Up until the 1980s, a family in a small farming town could walk...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisal Software / Appraisal Technology / Appraisers News / Automated Valuation Models

Inflated Prices, Taxed to Death 11

Inflated Prices, Taxed to Death

Freddie, Fannie Have Unwittingly Stoked Property Tax Firestorm. Inflated home values, engineered by Fannie and Freddie’s appraisal waivers and algorithmic lending, have distorted the market and saddled taxpayers with rising property tax burdens.  A wildfire is scorching the earth. Flashpoints are Texas, Florida, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, New Jersey, Ohio, Nebraska and Wyoming. There are others. Consider: The average U.S. home price in midyear 2020 was $371,100. In just two years, it jumped 41% to $525,100, as reported by the St. Louis Fed. Property values have risen almost 27% faster than inflation since 2020, according to...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Automated Valuation Models / AVM / Fannie Mae - Freddie Mac

xml sitemap