Category: Snippets

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...

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...

AI Efforts Focused on Debasing the Appraisal Professionals 14

Restricted Appraisal Reports Consumer Alert

The Appraisal Institute-pushed SB-70 law I talked about a while back has been in effect since January 1, 2019 and expires December 31, 2019. I just checked back in since it went into effect and was shocked to see this warning on the California’s Bureau of Real Estate Appraisers web site say this: The real estate appraisal process concludes with the appraiser’s opinion of value. Development of an appraisal includes the gathering of facts and evidence, using recognized methods and techniques of analysis, and applying reasoning and judgement. An Appraisal Report is a summary communication of this process and includes the data, relevant evidence,...

Smedley Dingledorf Takes the Job for $275...No Quality or Expertise 75

Smedley Dingledorf Takes the Job for $275

One of my lifetime best friends is Bart Simpson, who is an actual person. We grew up together from elementary school through high school but went our separate geographic ways to college. My other best friend during that era of my life was Harry Benson, who was also the key character in Michael Creighton‘s early best seller, “The Terminal Man” but that’s another story. Bart taught me how to ski and how to make plexiglass cookbook holders (hey it was the 70s). We spent our weekends riding bicycles everywhere, especially into D.C. on weekends to meticulously go through each of the...

USPAP is Unconstitutional & We Don't Have to Follow It, per 2 Appraisers 85

USPAP is Unconstitutional?

Gerald McNamara and Colleen Kudrick were admonished by the board in a five-count takedown. There is a lot of nuances here but the sanctions seemed to be based on the fact that one of the appraisers wasn’t licensed at the time and could not explain how she valued the property. The other who was certified said he did not assist in the preparation but did inspect the property. The client made a complaint and the board investigated. Seemingly doubling down on damaging their reputations, they filed a lawsuit against the appraisal board and seem to be saying that USPAP is...

The Future of Residential Lender Appraisers 8

The Future of Residential Lender Appraisers

What if you don’t want to do desktop bifurcated appraisals or the very tough appraisals that don’t work for AVMs? Or, wait, once again, for the lender market to finally come back. There are many forces trying to get field appraisers out of doing full valuations for mortgage loans. Automation and Artificial Intelligence will increase this trend, as it has done in other professions. For example, Quicken dramatically decreased demand for manual bookkeepers. Once lenders can determine which properties will work with an AVM, there will be fewer human appraisals. Recently, several appraisers emailed and called me saying their non-lender...

12-24 Hour Valuations: How Are We Worth So Little? 13

How Are We Worth So Little?

An appraiser sent me the following email. It has become clear to me that the valuation industry that engages appraisers now places more value on the physical inspection than it does the actual valuation itself. Why? They can’t replicate the interior inspection so the valuation portion is where the fee shaving occurs and believe they can come up with the value themselves or find people that will work for wages that won’t attract people who are competent, but rather, people that are desperate. [Bold for emphasis] Hello, You are receiving this email because you have expressed interest in completing desktop...

The Last Line of Defense... Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying 13

The Last Line of Defense

As I wrote recently, we learned a lot about both our industry and ourselves in 2018. We do provide an invaluable service to the lending community even though most of the mortgage industrial complex doesn’t appreciate or want it, largely because of the moral hazard generated by the taxpayer bailouts of 2008. Our expertise will be shifting to the consumer in the near term with some snapback to mortgage work after this all ends badly in the not so distant future. We just can’t sit around and wait for it. As was said in the movie “The Shawshank Redemption” we...

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