CoreLogic Policy Change Counter to USPAP Requirements
CoreLogic is pleased to announce a change to its data retention policy.
I received this notice from CoreLogic: Effective April 1, 2023, CoreLogic’s maximum storage commitment for appraisal and title data will be limited to 5 years.
Dear Trusted Provider,
In careful consideration of requests from our clients as well as industry risk management best practices, CoreLogic is pleased to announce a change to its data retention policy. Effective April 1, 2023, CoreLogic’s maximum storage commitment for appraisal and title data will be limited to 5 years. This change applies to all existing and future transactions processed within the following CoreLogic applications: Mercury Network, CMS, Appraisal Port, Title Port, Order Management, and Appraisal Scope.
CoreLogic appreciates your continued partnership.
Sincerely,
CoreLogic
USPAP: An appraiser must retain the workfile for a period of at least five years after preparation or at least two years after final disposition of any judicial proceeding in which the appraiser provided testimony related to the assignment, whichever period expires last.
So it would seem that you need to keep a separate file on your computer. Sad to see this company, that owns Realtor.com, ALAMODE and many other software real estate related companies, buck the appraisal regulations. They keep all of the changes to your files as your workfile. Now they abruptly decide to delete your workfile, the appraisal you did 5 years ago? How much notice do we have, to go back and download the old files? Boys and girls you have 30 days!
By Fitzhugh Turner, Certified General Appraiser and owner of Tidewater Properties Appraisers in Maryland.
And so many appraisers out there are going to have the audacity to be surprised. I am responsible for my workfile; not a service I pay. Me. I back everything up on an external hard drive that goes in the safe.
It states, “This change applies to all existing and future transactions processed within the following CoreLogic applications: Mercury Network, CMS, Appraisal Port, Title Port, Order Management, and Appraisal Scope.”
It does not state Alamode or Titan/Vault. Who pulls up the appraisal on those portals 4.5 years later?
Your files should still be safe for an unlimited amount of time in Alamode or Titan/Vault as long as you pay for that service, right???? Or am I missing something? TIA
It’s more than just the appraisal file which is effected by these policy changes. It’s the entire body of workflow management regarding any disputes, additional requests, additional uploads, important dates, follow up activity, etc. Imagine in an office highrise, all historical informational tracking is just thrown in the bin, all those calenders, all those scheduling and meeting notes, all the data uploads, gone. What, is Corelogic freeing up server space to make room for all the third party inspector mobile upload data? If Corelogic has their hand in it, everything is suspect as being applied for a possibly nefarious or exploitative purpose. A lot like the energy companies like Excel Energy, constantly on the prowl for how to exploit consumers and captive users of their services. “In careful consideration of requests from our clients as well as…” Well we know this Corelogic company ignores all advice from appraisers, constantly exploiting the valuation services industry, so we could perhaps conclude something else… They’re all like, how can we screw over appraisers today. Must have been a slow week on the hill.
This week I’m on about damned Excel Energy. They’re forcing captive consumers onto a specific time of day billing scheme, as well as lying through their teeth about the dangers and risks of installing transmitting meters on a million customers homes despite longstanding objections and the recent OTARD case where finally decades later we have proof in court that FCC safety studies are egregiously outdated and outmoded for the technical devices currently proliferating in the world.
If you are a consumer and have a choice, cherish that situation because in places like Colorado our public utilities commission is so corrupted, another captured agency which works against consumers best interests. My utility bill on a small ranch last month was $450, despite using 25% less energy than last year. When the new tiered billing rates hit my numbers are going to go even higher, forever, no relief. Three individual non elected people appointed by the governor decided that millions of Coldorado citizens should pay substantially more for energy in this state, forever into the future.
How is it that a blog even gets published on this and you can’t even read the stupid email??? No wonder lenders think we are ignorant. Read it again more carefully before you publish a blog to hundreds or thousands of appraisers. The requirement they are talking about is for appraisals that are stored on AMC systems like Appraisal scope. you know, when you upload the final report to the AMC and the lender? Stored for the lender not the appraiser. Not your workfile. No where does it mention APPRAISER file storage such as Titan Drive or other Alamode products. I hate that company as much as the next person, but I’m astounded that everyone is posting about this and literally so ignorant to not understand the difference between lenders storing appraisal files for the LENDER’S records and the USPAP recordkeeping requirements for APPRAISERS to keep their reports/workfiles. Duh! A lender is not subject to the recordkeeping rule of USPAP. That’s how long an APPRAISER has to keep the file. Geez, this is like the very first introductory thing you learned in appraiser 101. Hopefully some editor is going to read this and realize how literally ignorant this entire post and thread is. Let’s concentrate on some real issues not a made up issue that’s actually factually incorrect.
Well then they shouldn’t have emailed appraisers. I have never used any of the products their mentioning in their email but I still got this notification. I only use their appraisal software and I use my own back up system.
They shouldn’t have emailed appraisers. That’s why so many are confused!
I guess you’ve never heard of the term “legally required” ??? They wrongly assumed appraisers could READ.
Midwest, allow me to help. This was an important email to consider which did spark many appraisers interests. Not only has there been contention as to where exactly it may be acceptable for appraisers to have stored data, but there has also been a substantial body of technological systems development based on tracking and storing of appraisers report data, which also ties into many poorly formed appraiser performance metrics and grading systems applied by the unnecessary interjection of data brokers and data handlers into this industry. Of course best practices is for personal workfile storage but there may be more to this policy change than just that one issue.
My immediate thought upon reading the email was; What were they holding such data for such a long period for in the first place? It’s always been a concern for appraisers, who’s receiving our extracted mined report data, to then likely exploit or monetize that data later. It was a question which Corelogic and others refused to answer for a very long time; what exactly is being done with appraisal data, and how long is the storage shelf life of this data. Previously in years past we had tracked down and posted multiple Corelogic group patents which were publicly available, basically describing an infinite monetization of appraisal report data model, skipping the essential questions of who gave them authority to even mine and store what was supposed to be confidential report data in the first place.
They’re going to need new grading systems or to finally at least refresh those more frequently, perhaps missing a due date on a report 10 years ago can finally stop haunting appraisers profiles within these systems. Probably not though. Or dare to dream they’ll purge mined appraisal data, although that seems basically impossible, having long since re assimilated and sold such mined data. It’s why they’ve had patents on proprietary data models. A few years down the line; Where did all this real estate data come from? We can’t say exactly because it came from appraisers reports, before the industry was shut down by updated FNMA policies which preferred reliance on extracted previous data alongside poorly qualified third party inspector services. Nobody knows exactly but we are sure this was at one time, contemporary property data.
I don’t know, not every story has to be some big deal, I appreciate simple industry update articles too. Don’t worry, we’ll probably go back to some egregious bad news or betrayal of trust story next, which seems to be more common than not in the appraisal industry of late. People perceiving appraisers as less than qualified is not the problem which has led to all these issues. Rather we are experiencing a concerted conscientious dismantling of our careers and the valuation services industry in general, at the behest of insider and special interest influences, whom would rather not see an independent appraiser providing valid impartial and accurate checks and balances to the mortgage lending apparatus. Or something like that. I’d like to see an article on the FNMA email update from earlier this week which basically says we don’t need you anymore, post that too. I knew that 15 years worth of what appeared to be pointless screen copying and time wasting redundant printing of readily available order management notes from within these systems would eventually pay off. Geesh. For volume based and remote based appraisers whom relied on these systems as time saving tools, guess who just had the rug yanked out from under them. These policy changes affect some appraisers more than others.
So, four paragraphs when what you SHOULD have said is “yes, we created a completely false, clickbait headline to rile up appraisers based on their fears and conspiracies instead of working on something factual that has actual implications for working appraisers”. Still want to peel that onion and try to explain it away? Let’s go. It’s “best practice” for file self storage you say. Ok – that assumes an alternative to what, well EVERYONE does – which is store their own workfiles. But let’s assume somewhere on earth there’s an appraiser that doesn’t. Explain to me – exactly – how a state certified appraiser is storing EVERYTHING that USPAP requires in terms of workfile retention- IN APPRAISAL SCOPE?? (you know, a portal for AMCs)? They are uploading the final report to the lender. Maybe there’s a copy of the contract there. Where’s the rest of the workfile? MLS printout? County records? Are you telling me there are appraisers out there that are actually saying “I don’t need to keep a copy of my final appraisal – I’ll just leave it on the website for ABC Management Company and get it there when I need it”. REALLY??? If an appraiser is that technically incompetent – they DESERVE to have a compliance issue at that point – they are too dumb to possibly be competent as an appraiser. Second – if you’ve ever worked on the other side of things (I have, took a break from 30 years of appraising to be a chief appraiser at a regional bank several years ago, back as an appraiser for the past decade) – you’d know why lenders think we are so sensitive. We ordered appraisals directly but after Dodd-Frank we made a minor change to the internal software we used – so that it didn’t take our hourly staff as long to enter things. Emails from appraisers out of the woodwork with conspiracy theories and confusion – and mostly showed us who on our panel was really a technology lightweight. This is what happens if you’ve only ever been on one side of the appraisal world and just sit in your basement “guessing” how things work. Yes, big data groups ARE trying to take our data. They ARE trying to do bad things. But not EVERYTHING is about that and we sound like a bunch of morons when we jump to that crap for everything. Tell you what – why don’t you pop open Total, click HELP, ABOUT, VIEW EULA and look awhile at Item 5 for a bit. The part about “third parties”. See how easy that was to find instead of guess about? I run MY appraisal business based on contracts and facts, not “secrets” and “conspiracies”. BTW – all appraisal software (Clickforms, etc.) has generally this same clause. Now, imagine you’re a highly-paid corporate counsel for CoreLogic. You say “hey, we can make lots of money selling all this appraiser data we secretly extract from Total. We would blatantly violate this legal contract with customers and be sued for tens of millions – but let’s do it anyway”. AND – no former employee or whistleblower all these years has caught on (I’m sure the CoreLogic mafia had them taken out first) – and no one’s ever caught on to all this illegal activity. But you’re right. We should EXPOSE this grand conspiracy. Now, if you can’t see how blatantly stupid that is, I can’t help you. I have to add the following disclaimers because few that comment here read everything: I am not now nor have I ever been a Corelogic or affliated company employee, contractor or hitman. I think Corelogic IS the evil empire. I have been an appraiser for almost 30 years. I am, however, LITERATE. The end.
Don’t break a leg jumping so far. There is a difference between the long standing argument of data security and who should own or use appraisers data, vs the realities of the legal issues relating to terms of service and such all this time later now that outsiders took control of this industry changing it’s course, eroding clear definitions of limited client relationships. Appraisers used to really care about those issues. And no, not all people save every little process detail and it’s easy to miss some data capture especially when one is busy, which is why the long data retention spelled convenience for many appraisers. It’s probably more intriguing that this company is finally acknowledging a limited shelf life of data while still side stepping clear and transparent disclosure what purposes this data has served over all these years, although we basically know, the age of avm’s is here.
Probably it’s worse for the perception of the appraisal industry to shout and launch off the handle, rather than theorizing and trying to make positive contributions.
Can I ask my fellow appraisers a questions, I was an appraiser for 30 years, and retired a few years ago, how can I access my files I have saved if I have no soft ware available, I know it sounds simple, but I never have had a need so far, any suggestions for a tired and saddened member.
Your software should still work in a basic manner to access and print files, so don’t repurpose your work computer too much. You just can’t sign, print to xml, use maps, etc, etc. This was one of the reasons Alamode moved away from Aurora, because if you wanted, one could still use all these software functions, sign, and send, without actually paying the yearly renewal fees, you’d just have to get maps and a few other things online then import. Now you can only sign and do all these things with an active online connection, and that’s how technological upgrades work these days, less individual control for consumers, more repeat service for technological product purveyors. But for just basic appraisal software library access for your own content, you should still be able to access the files. If you don’t have signed copies, that’s when you’ll need to either go back into these online systems and pick signed files for your workfile, or get some temporary subscription deal with your old software to reprint a signed report if you need. If you used online the vault or something like that, you may need to go through the additional step of having a dedicated one or two terrabyte hard drive, to lay all your workfile data on there instead for permanent retention. Even the lowest subscription cost to Alamode offers this so nobody actually needs to pay for the vault, just ask for the instruction document how to manually back up work files with a hard drive. All you do is just navigate to a few specific files within the appraisal software area which contain your entire library, copy and paste them. Appraisers just take these things for granted. I’ve wondered how long one must retain EO insurance payments for after the fact. I’m hoping for a massive cardiac event so I never even have to worry about retirement, because retirement plans look pretty bleak for me in this industry right now. That’s only for more important people like government employees at HUD & FNMA. All the licensed appraiser vendors, we’re non persons, we don’t deserve any such normal thing like fair working conditions or retirement, or even a vote.
I present to the group; The light bulb conspiracy. Planned obsolescence. That’s you and me, we’re the light bulbs now.
Thank you Baggins, you are a big help, take care.