Back on April 19th, I wrote about the New York AMC law in my Housing Notes newsletter. After years of AMCs chipping away at the public trust, the New York AMC law was designed to protect the consumer. The bill summary was: Relates to the registration of real estate appraisal management companies or an individual or business entity that provides appraisal management services to creditors or to secondary mortgage market participants including affiliates by the department of state. Last week, AppraisersBlogs ran it as a standalone post and I got a lot of feedback. To be clear, the bill was...
If the appraisers want to take back their industry they need to come together… This new law in NY has aroused a lot of comments from appraisers but let’s be honest. Appraiser have been complaining about AMCs for the last 10 years and waiting for the government, regulators and other to solve the problem with the whole AMC disaster. I have written about this before, the appraisers have no one to blame except themselves. If you wait for someone else to solve the AMC problem you are looking in the wrong place. We all know of the problems with AMCs...
Appraisers, a new ‘company’ with “Appraisers Point” in their name has been marketing their services via emails across the fruited plain lately, encouraging appraisers to sign up on their web site and pay an annual fee so that ‘you’ can get on a list to be presented to, or accessed by, unnamed lenders, who might, or might not, want your service. They have a very slick looking web site that makes them look legit. Appraisers Point has no location shown on their website, so in reality, it could be anywhere in the world. The email messages show a location in...
Clarocity changed back to Zaio…screwing over every outstanding appraiser payment… Last week VaCAP shared information on Clarocity Corporation and how the main investor StableView Assets was seizing the shares and foreclosing on the working assets, which includes Clarocity Valuation Services. StableView in turn had an agreement to sell Clarocity Valuation Services to iLOOKABOUT. We warned to proceed with caution or do not proceed at all. We described the situation as a “soap opera.” We continue to monitor them and have learned many things. We debated on sharing this information with everyone, however we feel obligated to keep our members informed. First of concern...
…so what will happen to Clarocity Valuation Services? VaCAP has been following the Clarocity Corporation Soap Opera since one of our members had trouble getting paid from them back in November of 2017. After doing a bit more research on them, we issued a warning to our members in December 2017 to pay attention as Clarocity was in financial trouble. We kept watching and alerted our members that many of the AppraiserLoft Executives were now at Clarocity. We shared Clarocity was borrowing money at a bought down rate of 24% and repaying in stock shares in lieu of cash; all...
Jan Bellas breached their past wall of intransigence… Thank you SOLIDIFI Wow. That was more painful than I thought it would be. It’s no secret that I have been an extreme critic of Solidifi in the past. It’s also possible I will be so again in the future. I have not ‘sold out’ or traded my integrity or standards. What happened is that Jan Bellas of the American Guild of Appraisers, V.P. of Member Services has with great effort (and very little suggestion) breached their past wall of intransigence. With Solidifi’s Sr. Executives (Mr. “P” in particular) the very first...
…criminal investigation into price-fixing… The State of Pennsylvania has filed a class action law suit against some of the biggest banks and financial institutions in the country. The claim is these companies conspired to fix the prices on almost $500 billion in bonds issued by Fannie and Freddie over a mere 5 year period from 2009-2014. The named defendants are: Bank of America – Barclays Capital – BNP Paribas – Citigroup – Credit Suisse – Deutsche Bank & Deutsche Bank Securities – First Tennessee Bank & FTN Financial Securities – Goldman Sachs – JP Morgan Chase – Merrill Lynch –...
…forget the risky position foisted on the consumer by the loan officer… Well, here we go again. In my previous blog posts titled “Round and Round” and “Pressure My Story”, I spoke to examples of how lenders and/or AMCs have been pushing and pressuring appraisers to hit certain values on transactions. If an appraiser did not hit these numbers, or make changes to make the transaction work in the lender’s favor, the appraiser would be threatened with non-payment, removal from appraiser panels, and/or blacklisted. If you haven’t read those blog posts, feel free to go back and have a look....
Hybrid hucksters always argue “Why can’t trained professionals like brokers or insurance inspectors” perform the appraiser’s field inspection. The answer is because ‘trained professionals’ like those noted don’t work for $25 an inspection; are unwilling to give up their day jobs for a chance at a single $25 inspection one or two days a week, AND if they are truly trained professionals, to begin with, they are unwilling to work for part-time income of $0 to $25 a day in vain hope of having a periodic 8 or 16 inspection day (assumes all 16 are side by side since there’d...
An AMC for a lender contacted a residential appraiser with the request that the appraiser “appraise only the second floor residence” in a two story Live-Work building within a commercial district, where SFR’s are allowed by zoning. Ground floor area of this Live-Work building is an ice cream & gift shop. The second floor is a fully finished & functional residence. Entire property is being sold. There are numerous legitimate Live-Work buildings in Seattle (and likely elsewhere also). They are properly zoned as such, are listed that way, appraised by using similar type sales – and mortgaged. Typically these are 2-3...
