Mechanic liens major objector was the title Companys. Before appraisers were licensed appraisers, subdividers, the UNLICENSED could only try as a threat, a defense would kick it out!
After licensing appraisers met all the qualifications. The prequalifying may be a little awkward but some of our clients are A-holes

It depends on your state Wendy. Im told by attorneys in my state (CA) that no mechanics lien can be filed for appraiser fees.

Ud live to be wrong but so far haven’t had any authoritative indication that I am.

You are incorrect…the appraisal IS A SERVICE TO THE PROPERTY AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN. I have had to file against the subject property and any service person doing work on real estate is service to that property.

Lots of persons out their smarter than appraisers. My first year in business (1972) I’d accumulated $10,000 in acc’ts receivable. Wow whoda thunk! I shut down mostly for a month and began collecting. Lots of experience in things i didn’t want to know about. All you collage kids didn’t have to suffer that SHIT, I’ve had a stinking good time ever since.

Some of my education came from being sued, My clients legal staff said that without a contract I would be OUT any reimbursement costs for my successful defense trial.

I learned, will you! Once a women divorce attorney was regular client, She would pay me after the job and I thought nothing of it. UNTIL I was invited to her bankruptcy!!!

Now I use the phrase “I’ll begin the inspection on receipt of my FEE”

I believe that all 50 states have county LAW Libraries citing all kind of stuff an independent might run into. Its very quite in all of those libraries where you can get first hand info about your own state. Is the penalty for wrongfully leaning the house appraised higher than the loss on collection. That would be Germain question for an attorney to ask if he were to defend you.

When I received cash or check from the owner i receipted him with a form kept under my clip board. This tear in half, signed receipt stated WHO my client was and to whom I would deliver the report. I also used an engagement letter also clarifying the client and the job alerting the client of the pending inspection. this stuff was learned the hard way

don

I used to offer a receipt for every PAID AT THE DOOR fee which I received. This receipt included WHO was my client and that the property owner was merely extending that credit for my convenience. We each kept a copy. No more escrow officers filing mistakes, cash flow was improved.

You were correct about liening the subject property for your fee. HOWEVER when licensing came we became contractors or mechanics and under that interpretation we could lien. The threat was sufficient

There is some supposed notion that even though amc’s can’t even manage billing properly, they should be trusted with all these other responsibilities without any such similar concerns. Logic has left the building. Undoubtedly somewhere in the amc community, unlicensed people are using inside information to get ahead on real property transactions somehow with their personal dealings apart from their employer.

The ASA, AI, AGA and many others including the one who’s abbreviations I can never remember signed a joint letter drafted by Johnathan Russell of ASA. Third and final draft went out to al last week and is going in before the 4th. I am assuming the same folks that signed first draft that weren’t shown on third draft version I received are also signing again.

It is an outstanding letter, and as soon as it’s sent it can be posted.

Most of us also sent our own separate letters, but this was the best I’ve seen by far.

Suggestions: Oppose on basis that Fed regulatory agencies previous opposed it less than two years ago. Nothing new took place. The sole justification provided was inflation. State its a spurious argument since the original proposed deminimis was only $15K!!!;

The important thing though is to answer each of their postulated questions. “Yes, there IS increased risk to the taxpayers, etc. and state your opinions why (higher exposure; incorporates almost all residential funding today, increases amount loan officers and commissioned bank officers can certify values on despite being interested parties. Anything else you can think of.

I didn’t author the draft or I’d post it here for all to get ideas from.

Still working on it….But you are right. My understanding is under new (circa CU 2015) the data is uploaded to FNMA who them sells it to CL…Though the sequential logistics are still suspect.

That’s not exactly true Baggs. Appraisers in lending do NOT have much choice in who to work for (AMC vs direct lenders) because for so long AMC use was mandatorily required under HVCC with extremely few exceptions.

I usually choose NOT to work for AMCs. That’s my choice because I have options. Not everyone does.

The only AMC I work for is the one that stood by me when I had my state complaint. They could have thrown me under the bus and gotten off with a $10K fine to corrupt BREA. Instead they are (still) paying off the better part of our joint $145,000 legal bills. I don’t do a lot of direct work for them, but enough to make the difference between economic survival and modest comfort.

The Sherman Act. Good luck trying to get anyone to enforce RICO on lenders. AG coalitions have done so, but for much larger issues. Appraisers don’t get to claim protected class or discrimination. Appraisers have the choice to work with amc’s or not and there is no requirement to do so. It’s a case of they sold it, the appraisers bought it. The choice is always there to simply say no.

That’s right. Eliminate the middle managers ability to drive down the appraisers fee for variable profit and the old what’s your fee and turn time nonsense will stop immediately. Also borrowers would for the first time in 10 years of dealing with amc’s, actually see cost savings from reduced cost of appraisal services. “Nobody would work this hard just to save someone else a dollar and a day.” They do that for self interested purposes in a complex unregulated billing approach which would otherwise be illegal for any other party in the mortgage transaction. I feel like I might possibly have read or even made such a statement before… Junk fees are legal for amc’s and this should never have been allowed in the first place.

Is it a matter of insuring payment to Appraisers or a matter of preventing AMCs co-mingling Borrowers money paid for a specific purpose (Appraisal cost) with the AMCs operating budget.

Borrowers pay those fees with the idea that they ARE paying for a particular service in advance as part of the loan process. Only to find out later that Appraisers are seeking reimbursement for a service they believed paid? The co-mingling of a Borrower’s Appraisal fee is no different than a title company or attorney using deposits and earnest money to subsidize a company’s Christmas party, employee salaries, etc.

All the posturing and rhetoric regarding protection of the public trust is just that until regulators decide misappropriation and co-mingling of a Borrower’s Appraisal fees by an AMC is an illegal activity. And Lenders should not be allowed to look the other way as theft of service enablers while their agents abscond with Appraisal fees

It should be illegal to commingle funds – the public trust is being hoodwinked.

Fix the commingling problems and the appraiser payment fee issues is resolved.

Is that still going on? Laughable. Offering stock options on third party middle management ponzi scheme services. What a joke and who actually bought that? Hopefully a different set of regulatory rules apply when offering to investors and the amc’s typical expected game of legally defrauding everyone will not fly. They did nothing different than they do every day in the real estate industry, they just tried that in the investor market instead. I’m done reading those boards and probably will only get re interested if someone is actually going to jail.

I’ll make that 276 soon but it’s a shame more people have not commented. I keep telling everyone they need a form letter with a brief few sentence free writing line. That way more people would sign and send, and the powers that be would not be so easily able to count all the letters as one, because each letter would have at least one or two sentences of unique writing. It’s not rocket science and it’s obvious that asking for activism is not as effective as providing a simple avenue and platform for interested persons to simply sign and send. Also this is an indication how few appraisers actually keep up with regulation like they’re supposed to.

It is the amc industries need to pocket the difference, absent of cost plus billing, driving appraisers fees down in a variable what’s your fee and turn time nature, that leads to these payment policies. Similar to the taxation argument, if Americans had to write a check weekly for all the tax money they actually pay, the jig would be up in a heartbeat. Same for amc’s, if appraisers were aware of how these companies actually operated, far fewer appraisers would be willing to work with them.

Personally I don’t like collect at the door because it complicates the conversation about client confidentiality and whom ‘owns’ the report. I’m more in favor of clearly separated billing but would actually prefer to get that convenient check in the mail at a later date. I don’t care how long a company takes to pay me, so long as they don’t rake off the top and do pay me the full fee. The old we pay quickly as a justification to bill less, tired and stale, who’s still buying that? The check to checkers I guess. How about we have credit checks as a qualification criteria for being on panel. Logic would indicate if an appraiser can not manage their own finances, they really should not be advising others on anything financial in the first place.