Locked Out of AMC Panels over UAD 3.6: Going Inactive
Let me be completely transparent: I am officially turning down UAD 3.6 assignments. I am done. For months, appraisal management companies (AMCs) flooded our inboxes with fee surveys, asking what we needed to handle the massive transition. Appraisers responded by submitting their proposed fees to cover the sheer volume of extra labor required to complete these new 3.6 reports.
It turns out those questionnaires were a complete farce.
Instead of treating us like independent business professionals, these AMCs are just flat out rejecting our proposed fees and locking us out of their panels. They are making it clear that if we don’t accept their dictated “market rate fees,” we don’t get assignments period. We are given an ultimatum: swallow their lowball fees, mark our status as inactive, or leave the appraisal panels entirely. What market? The artificial, broken market where AMCs force appraisers into a race to the bottom for the lowest possible bid across AMC panels?
The hypocrisy here is staggering. Lenders and consumers are paying premium appraisal fees at checkout, while the boots on the ground doing the actual heavy lifting are expected to absorb double the workload for stagnant or even reduced fees. The UAD 3.6 data standard strips away our traditional narrative analysis and demands an exhausting level of granularity. We are stuck filling out rigid, component level condition ratings and room by room data fields that turn a standard assignment into a six to eight hour software compliance nightmare.
To make it worse, AMCs are aggressively continuing their legacy bans on invoices with UAD 3.6 reports. Because the GSEs left fee disclosure optional, AMCs can continue to hide the fee split. They block us from showing the consumer exactly how much of their hard earned money pays for actual local appraisal expertise versus how much is pocketed by an administrative intermediary who never sets foot on the property.
I refuse to tank my effective hourly rate to subsidize AMC profit margins. If accepting these assignments means choosing between financial insolvency or leaving the panel, then consider me inactive. We need to stop having these conversations behind closed doors. If the mortgage industry expects credible appraisal work to protect the secondary market, they need to pay for the professional hours it takes to produce it. Until they do, my panel status stays off.
