Appraisal News and Appraisal Tips For Real Estate Appraisers - Your source for appraisal industry news, appraisers' opinions, and discussions of appraisal issues
On September 2, 2020, FNMA updated their policy allowing for Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU) on Single Family Residential (SFR) properties to be a Manufactured Home. This is in their Selling Guide Announcement SEL-2020-05, linked below. Key points: An accessory dwelling unit (ADU) is an additional living area that is independent of the primary property and has basic bathroom, cooking, and sleeping facilities. With this update, we clarified ADU property eligibility and comparable sales requirements in the appraisal as follows: expanded the current definition of an ADU to improve proper classification of ADUs; expanded property eligibility by allowing multi-width manufactured homes...
The continued reliance of unregulated aggregators and bifurcated products continues to erode the public trust at the expense of discarding the profession specifically intended to promote the public trust. How does this protect the public?… On June 14, 2005 Steve Jobs told a class of graduates, “you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward” Around the same time, I was appointed as the sole residential member of the appraisal licensing board of my state. Little did I realize that this 2005 governor-appointed position would eventually lead me to sharing a stage in 2018 with...
The Appraisal Institute just sent a letter to The Appraisal Foundation to address things that have been floating out in the ether for nearly two years. The November 2018 Brookings Institute report blames appraisers without proof or logic for lower property values in minority communities and then the June 2019 Congressional Hearing amplified the Brookings misrepresentation of the appraisal industry. It’s taken 14 months to send this letter? Interestingly, the chairman of the Board of Trustees that Jeff is writing to is a personal property appraiser and not a real estate appraiser. Real property appraisal is the reason for TAF’s...
Meet the Honest Appraisers Whose Warnings Should Have Prevented the Great Financial Crisis The honest appraisers’ warning was ideal. It was timely, blunt, courageous, and unambiguous. If the regulators had acted on the warning, there would have been no Great Financial Crisis (GFC). Unfortunately, the Presidents Clinton and Bush (II) appointed financial regulators because they were anti-regulators, so they ignored the appraisers’ warning. From 2000 to 2007, a coalition of appraisal organizations … delivered to Washington officials a public petition; signed by 11,000 appraisers… [I]t charged that lenders were pressuring appraisers to place artificially high prices on properties [and] “blacklisting...
On July 29, 2020, the Appraisal Subcommittee voted to extend the North Dakota waiver for another year with a 6 to 1 vote. The overarching reason to extend was because of the COVID outbreak prevented them from meeting in person this year. HUD was the only agency to take issue with this and I have to say I agree with their reasoning. North Dakota had 7 months to come up with a solution before COVID hit. I’m not taking ASC to task on this though because there is some validity to the COVID excuse. My assumption is that there is...
Will this be detrimental to appraisal management companies that operate under the fast and cheap mentality?… Let’s face it, the appraisal management company will not survive with quality appraisals at a reasonable and fair fee… The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is seeking public comments on the proposed rules for a Qualified Mortgage. The proposed rules require the lender to season the mortgage for 36 months before they can sell it to Fannie or Freddie. What that means is the lender will own that loan for 3 years. Fast forward if the new rule goes into effect… The lender will be...
Folks, California Certified General appraiser John Carlson (Napa area) just experienced a total devastating loss of his home, three others, outbuildings, etc., on the family ranch, Thursday 8/20/20, due to the major wildfire in the Napa valley wine country. Fortunately, John’s office is off-site and was not torched. A family friend has set up a GoFundMe account for John and family. If you see it in your heart, please donate! On that page, there is a photo of one of the horses that survived, surrounded by the burned area. As of about 8 pm on Friday 8/21/20, about 40% of...
Should appraisers pay to be on an AMC’s approved appraiser list? Is this one way to get new clients? If an AMC solicited you, would you check it out? Now, I work for some AMCs that, frankly, you might not choose to work for. That’s fine. It’s a choice we all make. Understand that most of the areas I work are rural, so AMCs are generally willing to pay more because of this. Some AMC are very demanding. Yet, when I meet those demands, I get a lot of well-paying jobs from them. Recently, a new AMC asked me to...
A low appraisal is now a bad appraisal. Well, that’s according to the headline. The article does not stress ‘bad.’ See the article, “A Wild Market Means More Home Appraisals are Coming in Low. Here’s What to do if a Bad Appraisal Threatens Your Deal”, in Money.com. “We” appraisers are now experiencing the same level of buyer goofiness and panic we encountered in 2006-2008, before everything melted down. Inventories are low, and buyer interest is intense. In my immediate neighborhood less than a month ago, an older vacant home came up for sale, listed in the MLS. I looked at...
Instead, good appraisers have been lumped in with the bad appraisers who are long gone… Although I’ve shared the following CNBC clip before, it’s worth showing again given my 15-year ago hairstyle. In 2005, I was interviewed by CNBC in the midst of the Housing Bubble and said that 75% of the appraisals being done then weren’t worth the paper they were written on (hey it was 2005 and they were done on paper, not pdf). They found me because I had just started my Matrix Blog because no one seemed to be listening to appraisers. Incidentally as of this week, Matrix is...
