Meanwhile, cratering home prices are eroding demand for the junk-rated credit transfers. As mortgage giants Fannie and Freddie bend the knee to their political overlords, they securitize ever riskier loans. It’s a sign of the times. But while no one was looking, the twins – who wield the full faith and credit of the U.S. government – began quietly offloading this surplus risk in the form of so-called “credit-risk transfers.” The U.S. taxpayer should be worried. As the public learned in 2008 with AIG’s credit-default swaps, hidden risk injected into the financial system doesn’t stay hidden for long. The twins,...
That article mentioned three on-line services which claim to provide accurate property values. In alphabetical order, those services were REDFIN, ReMax, and Zillow. Folks, in all the diatribes against appraisers by people who believe “we” have built-in systemic bias, the topic of AVMs has come up. Some of the diatribers apparently think that using an AVM will magically produce an accurate property valuation, while eliminating bias, and appraisers. Well, not so fast. A while ago I saw a ‘consumer facing’ article telling people how they could get the value on their home. That article mentioned three on-line services which claim...
It is gratifying when appraisers are correct, and the AVMs burn; unless you invested in their stocks. I mean no disrespect to the modelers of the Automated Valuation Models (AVMs) or to Zillow for relying on their AVMs. As an appraiser since the 80s, I have yet to find a computer that can tell me if I want vanilla or chocolate ice cream. Does the buyer want more acres, or less grass to cut? I will admit that a raised ranch, a two story farm house, a colonial, a split level, and a Dutch colonial can all sell for the...
The government wants to move to a fully automated appraisal format, and the more that they can dirty the narrative in their favor, the quicker they get to their objective… This just in: In a recent memo, the CFPB wants you to know that if you are buying a home, that you can contest your appraisal. By the way, anyone at any time can contest an appraisal for any reason. This isn’t new. Not at all. In fact the CFPB doesn’t really give two craps about your opinion of value or the Appraiser’s opinion of value. This has nothing to...
It still proves my point: Appraisal Management Companies take a sizable Cut of the appraisal fee… It was March 28th, 2018 that I wrote my very first blog post entitled “What’s not in your wallet?” where I went into great detail about how Appraisal Management Companies or AMCs get paid and how the consumer is not aware of the fact that the AMC is taking much of the fee while finding the cheapest and fastest appraiser. In that blog post, I gave many examples of the abuse appraisers and consumers are absorbing by these Appraisal Management Companies. How one borrower...
You feel like Fannie Mae is simply trying to get rid of appraisers. A lot of appraisers feel that way… “Even amidst tragedy there is sometimes farce,” wrote author Daniel Prokop. Unleashing tragedy and farce in equal measure, mortgage giant Fannie Mae is using its muscle to coerce lenders to repurchase early COVID-era loans. Fannie apparently deems them now too risky for its portfolio. As a ploy, say observers, Fannie is generating automated appraisals similar to Zillow’s “Zestimates” and using them to undermine appraised values in loans it wants to offload. Fannie’s automated system then sends unsigned boilerplate complaints to...
Yesterday morning, I attended the Georgia state appraisal board hearing on the proposed rule to eliminate the C&R fee law they have in place. You know, the one that is similar to the one in Dodd-Frank. The Georgia appraisal board apparently is being investigated by the FTC for their law. They thought that the FTC vs the Louisiana case was a ruling in favor of the FTC when in fact it was not, and wanted to avoid any sort of notion that they were price fixing or of anti trust. The board received letters from appraisers and others in the...
I’m on about lawn mowing lately. It’s my new full time passion. The appraisal industry should be as straight forward as lawn mowing, but due to the special interests pressures within the value industry, it has become convoluted and dysfunctional. Can you imagine if they ran the lawn mower industry like they try to run the appraisal industry? Like, we don’t care if that lawn is on slope or not, you can only use this mower and you’re not allowed to be versatile and use anything else. And you can’t request the lawn mowing servicer you want to use, you...
“…the modern appraisal industry perpetuates racial inequality through its continued use of the “sales comparison approach”… the sales comparison approach persists as the dominant method of assessing home value… the sales comparison approach — the most used method for contemporary residential appraisals — perpetuates inequities through maintaining historical hierarchies and current racialized definitions of comparability…” Appraisers, here’s a YouTube video that you MUST view. This person’s, Dr. Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, PhD, work is one of the key reasons why there is so much chatter about racist appraisers in the US. Her discussion of her book ‘Race Brokers‘ begins at the 8:30...
No one wants to be the messenger… Appraisers are messengers. Why is their message so despicable? So biased? The messenger. Psychology research easily points out our tendency to dislike the bearer of bad news. It’s also intuitive. Bad news messengers do not smile when they bring the news. Sometimes they even look guilty. We humans can be really basic. We see a correlation between the bad news, the frown, and the messenger. Appraisers are messengers. Why is their message so despicable? So biased? In the entire real estate transaction, everyone wants to make a deal. Brokers want to make a...
