“Because only rich people deserve the protections of checks and balances systems.”

Bank regulators propose expanding exemption for residential appraisals.pdf

Mike, this story which our friend, Mike from GA posted coincides with this situation.

Take care.

We are now ready to start moving forward. Give us a few days to recover from jet lag and overall exhaustion from Appraiserfest, and to absorb all the information learned there. Y’all can keep adding to the list here or send an email to janbellas@appraisersguild.org. In subject line please put “Add me to Class Action interest list”. Give her your contact information name and email and preferably addresses and phone numbers for the attorneys down the road (SHORTLY).

Having said that, the documentary film crew that interviewed several of us is absolutely interested in this and other appraiser abuses and gave us extensive time in interviews. Maureen Sweeney (my new heroine) known to many fighting for the profession was interviewed well over an hour I believe. Many others as well. Phil Crawford, Jonathan Miller, Woody Fincham (? I think) Not sure about Skap – he was pretty busy supporting the fest. Yours truly was interviewed for about half an hour and they may contact myself and others alter to flesh out the interviews.

Can’t say for sure…they ran the interviews for three days so a lot of people I didn’t see were also interviewed. One AGA member who is a former FNMA insider had an opportunity to give DEVASTATING information about the inner workings of FNMA.

I just got back this afternoon. There was so much positive activity and information from the Fest that I have to absorb it all before trying to write about it.

How can we bump and revisit this again later, keep the numbers growing? Sticky thread?

Spotify Settles Class Action Lawsuits Filed By David Lowery and Melissa Ferrick With $43.4 Million Fund

Interesting the dots that can be connected sometimes.

The gem there is the ucdp vendor list. Hey, I’ve paid money to them, and them, and them… We’re all customers now.

Valuelinkams is the only one I ever enjoyed working with and never had a technology fee applied to my orders. aka spurams.

More interesting research Baggs.

I see a potential for confusion between FNMAs definition of an aggregator (primary lender that accepts the loan from a correspondent lender) and that used by a self proclaimed ‘data aggregators’ such as the Giant Corporate information gatherer we all know and love without naming them specifically..

Now I wonder if that self described function by The Giant is intended to slip inferred appraisal access authorization into a system whereby they are accepted as an authorized ‘aggregator by FNMA? Just thinking out loud – not accusing.

The below is the officially recognized statement by fnma which all appraisers should be including as standard text language anyways.

Appraiser Certifications and Limiting Conditions
<> Fannie Mae will accept the following additional notice or statement when appraisers believe the lender client is the only intended user: “The intended user of this appraisal report is the lender/client. The intended use is to evaluate the property that is the subject of this appraisal for a mortgage finance transaction, subject to the stated scope of work, purpose of the appraisal, reporting requirements of this appraisal report form, and definition of market value. No additional intended users are identified by the appraiser.”

So that takes me down the rabbit hole of who is an intended user, how is data shared and aggregated, who are aggregators, etc. These are very illuminating documents I’ve never read before.

https://www.fanniemae.com/content/user_guide/ucdp-appraisal-sharing-user-guide.pdf

The above Appraisal sharing job aid faq for correspondents. You may have heard that your appraisals are shared with multitudes of different parties, there is the complete track history of all activity, etc. These reports get around…

In the below link, the master list of recognized tsp’s (technology solution providers) & amc’s providing the same. If you’ve ever wondered how some companies grew to be powerhouses overnight and captured so much work without resistance… It’s because they digi tooled for this proprietary mismo ucdp access, voila, majority market share for distribution. This is odd, every single company on this list has a financial incentive to drive my tech fees up or my appraisal fees down. This is what appraisers meant when they said; We’re no longer participating in a free market but rather are customers of technology providers now. We have no effective representation and this gatekeepers list proves it.

https://www.fanniemae.com/content/list/ucdp-vendor-list.pdf

And if you’d like perspective as if you’re on the other side of the desk, top off your light reading with the ucdp main page. It’s all there, lists and guides, etc. Search as I may, I was unable to find a list of approved ucdp data aggregators. They are possibly listed in the ‘vendors list section’, after you click the ‘technology integration’ link from the main page. Many individual websites to peruse but they all basically offer similar data integration data analysis products from proprietary access databases. Appraisal data and consumer data alike has likely been monetized far beyond our current understanding.

https://www.fanniemae.com/singlefamily/uniform-collateral-data-portal

Completely different issues involved. Attorneys will jump on labor law cases all day long.

If just 50% of the active appraisers chipped in $100 – that’s around $2,000,000. That should get Steve Cannons attention and his firm is already well aware of our plight fighting the FTC.

William, No disrespect intended (seriously), but it is exactly that kind of negative and defeatist thinking that keeps appraisers from TRYING to get anything done. In answer to your question, “No,”

Most attorney are not experts in real estate law. Even fewer know anything about appraiser regulations. Then there is the issue of jurisdictions. We have 50 different states; plus D.C. plus 7 territories. Few attorneys can find enough appraisers in one state that agree to the same complaint (just look at how we appraisers all seem to disagree over everything nationally). Most law firms look for well established law-cases like labor laws / overtime and deep enough pockets to make it worth their while.

Solidifi was a target by one firm I know of more than two years ago – but that same firm wouldn’t touch Federal jurisdictional issues. (It requires separate approvals to practice before federal courts). So, most law firms look for the low hanging fruit.

The old FNC case based on The Lanham Act seemed to give us best support from what I read, BUT until very recently, courts ruled against appraisers on it. It was only last year (?) that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rendered a decision that so definitively addressed the issue of theft of data specifically being used to compete against those that the data was stolen from; and when it was stolen under a guise of trusted confidential services. There can also be an argument made that the (to be more fully determined) also devalued our professional work product and expertise by stealing data from us and then selling it piecemeal at ridiculously low rates ‘per comp’.

I think there are lot of additional issues to be thrown into the mix, but I am not an attorney or legal expert. What I DO know is that without fail, law firms ask how many people does this potentially affect and how many of those affected people are willing to sign on?

We know from the FHFA Working paper (recently) that FNMA has over 30 million appraisals since 2011. Many are dupes or second and possibly third appraisals. We know CL absorbed FNC and in various ads has advertised a database in excess of ‘millions’. Clarocity has also claimed to have millions of appraisal results in their databases (although that particular empty pocket won’t likely have any recoverable assets). These aren’t the only ones offering AVMs. Look at other lawsuits such as CL and House Canary. There is a tremendous amount of potentially damning information out there.

There are currently about 40,000 appraisers doing FNMA work. That may or may not be in addition to appraisers that used to do work for them. It doesn’t seem to include FreddieMac. Potentially it could include all licensed appraisers at any given point in an identifiable likely target period.

The potential calculations have so far NOT included all the home owners/buyers that paid for what they thought were just appraisals to determine collateral value – not for use in helping some (to them) unidentified data aggregator to take their personal and or property information (including income data that could be inferred by terms and conditions of a sale or sale amount). Potential numbers? An additional 30 million+.

There much more to it than outlined above, including some incredible research by people like Marion; Baggins and many others that have had their eyes open for a long time.

The final ingredient is the law firm to be selected. They have to have deep enough pockets to carry this through and a willingness to do so. They also have to be pretty big time attorneys. We’ve spoken to some. After Appraiserfest we will try to pin down what we think we can do and what we are told we can or can’t do.

If you are ‘in’, then please sign the interest list so we can add your name to the count. Waiting for others to ‘make this go somewhere’ doesn’t help. Join us, please.

Yup, the intended use was not to fill databases to be used in competition with appraisers.

Sign up!

Mike, if your referring to the Landsafe tax identification/overtime class action suit, then your 100% correct concerning payouts. One of my original trainers who went to the dark side to survive, cashed a check of over $130,000. That was a different issue, but is small potatoes (130 appraisers / one company), compared to the tens of thousands of appraisers and their tens of millions appraisals completed over the past 10 years.

Seek the truth.

We have a solid firm in mind.

The numbers COULD be everything in FNMAs DB; CL’s; anything stripped in AppraisalPort, mercury, corelamode, clarocity or anyone else hustling AVMS that has ever advertised they have millions of appraisals in their databases. It really could be huge. That’s just from the appraisers side. I imagine this could even include some of the nations larger title companies.

That doesn’t take into account the borrowers that paid only for appraisals and then had commercial users take the product they paid for and use it for their own unauthorized alternative uses.

Signed it. Forwarded to a few friends. Thank you.

Taking bets on Corelogics ‘proprietary sources’ of data. Any guesses?

In case you missed it… FNMA CU patents and some commentary on that.

Some good commentary regarding the below link with more pointed commentary on the details, located in the Appraisers Blogs article titled “Help Wanted”, from April 26, 2018

http://www.patentbuddy.com/Company/Profile/Fannie-Mae/61740

Appraisal Adjustment Scoring System and Methods… Wait, is that a review?

Instant mortgages; “Slam dunked another one!”