Tagged: AVM

Technology Forced Upon Appraisers Is About Money in AMC Pockets 37

Enough Already, Nobody is Listening

AMC technology is not about efficiency of the appraisal process… I am very tired of reading all the articles from appraisal management companies stating appraisers need to embrace new technologies and tools. Please stop telling me how to do my job! For the record, appraisers are professionally trained and licensed individuals. We use technology each and every day. We use analytical tools each and every day. Our most power tool, our brains, tells us most of these new technologies and analytical tools are pure garbage; not because the programs are flawed, but they do not have enough accurate data to...

Zillow Gone Wild 21

Zillow Gone Wild

Some very interesting news is surrounding Zillow… A lawsuit over Zestimates has now gone to a class action status. This will have rippling effects on each and every state and expand the liability to not only licensing, but privacy and consumer fraud. Read about this change here. Excerpt from the article titled “Class-action suit aims to halt Zestimates in Illinois”: “The Zestimates that Zillow posts are misleading and pose as accurate appraisals in violation of Illinois’ legal description of an appraisal, according to the complaint filed by three members of the Patel family and Schaumburg-based CastleBldrs.com. They claim homebuyers read...

CoreLogic vs Appraisers: My Day as an Appraiser 117

My Day as an Appraiser

Big Corporations like CoreLogic are like sharks… This morning, as I do every morning, I made some coffee and began work on one of the two appraisal reports that were soon to be due. The first was for an AMC known as Speedy Title and Appraisal Review Services. This appraisal management company is owned by CoreLogic. From their website “CoreLogic is an Irvine, CA based corporation providing financial, property and consumer information, analytics and business intelligence. The company analyzes information assets and data to provide clients with analytics and customized data services. The company also develops proprietary research, and tracks...

Baby or Bath Water? And Is it Time to Take Back USPAP? 31

Baby or Bath Water? And Is it Time to Take Back USPAP?

About half of AICPA members don’t believe in USPAP… When I first heard that “they” were trying to do away with the Appraisal Practices Board (APB) of the Appraisal Foundation (TAF), I tried to keep an open mind. I also wondered who “they” are. Did the Appraisal Institute (AI) finally get a sympathetic ear in Congress? Was it preemptive action by the Board of Trustees in anticipation of budget cuts by the new administration? By the way, what does the APB do? I certainly had it wrong. I thought they helped develop the Advisory Opinions (AOs)! To be candid the...

Residential Appraisers Being Phased Out 20

Appraisal Alternatives

Computers eliminating “boots on the ground” residential appraisers. An historian once quipped, “I cannot predict the future, but give me six months and I’ll tell you why it was inevitable.” Residential appraisers who work in the mortgage arena began to experience the sea change when UAD arrived amongst much fanfare in September of 2011. Years of portals, hard-stops, and overrides have settled into an uneasy routine. We’ve already seen changes to closing docs as a result of TRID (TILA RESPA Integrated Disclosures). That adventure began in November 2013. Washington DC, never content to maintain any level of consistency has already...

Higher Value Bids - Appraiser Versus Machine 32

Appraiser Versus Machine?

Loan officer, the bank, homeowner… want a higher value… Automated Valuation Models: Are they any good? Appraiser vs Machine? AVMs were run on a few properties that were recently appraised. The results are well, ….. they are what they are. The questions are: Are they good? Are they good enough? Will the consumer accept them? Will the banks and lenders accept them? Below are the samples. We have to be careful as we are appraisers and don’t want to be sitting in front of the VREAB explaining why we shared assignment results in violation of the confidentiality requirements of the...

Freddie Mac Criminal Aspects of Its Appraisal Free Mortgages 38

Freddie Mac Criminal Aspects of Its Appraisal Free Mortgages

Freddie Mac is opening itself up to over 150,000± potential individual lawsuits… This is a response from Mike Ford to Kenneth Harney’s article, “Freddie Mac planning appraisal-free mortgages”. I represent the American Guild of Appraisers, #44OPEIU, AFL-CIO, and the real estate appraisal-related consumer and taxpayer interests of our more than fifteen million± AFL-CIO members, retirees and their families. I’m prompted to write this open letter regarding your recent well written & researched article, titled “Freddie Mac planning appraisal free mortgages”. Regrettably, it was too brief to cover several additional critical aspects of the issue, but I assume the Chicago Tribune’s...

Automated Revolution Valuation Imposters 14

Automated Revolution, the Valuation Imposters

Along comes the automated valuation revolution… The appraisers we need, to keep consumers protected, are the very ones being driven out of the business. They are being forced out by big banks and AMCs (who much too often provide zero benefits to consumers). Everyone seems to have forgotten that these services (provided by AMCs) used to be part of the bank’s responsibility for every loan. It was just the cost of doing business. Then came the AMCs and banks’ profits had to go up. After all, they lost a whole department. Now they pass the expenses along, mostly on the...

Property Inspection Waiver: Fannie Mae Offering to Waive Appraisals 48

Fannie Mae Waiving Appraisals

Property Inspection Waiver, getting back to the old days of fogging a mirror… Appraisers, Effective 12/10/16, FNMA will have a new program in place which will allow LENDERS to waive appraisals on certain refi’s, if it is offered through the automated Desktop Underwriter (DU) loan documentation process. See the attached PDF. Key points from the PDF (emphasis mine): Property inspection waiver (PIW) is an offer to waive the appraisal for certain refinance transactions. Property Inspection Waiver offers are issued through Desktop Underwriter® (DU®) using Fannie Mae’s database of more than 20 million appraisal reports in combination with proprietary analytics from...

The RPR® Epidemic – Online Valuations vs Trained Appraisers 11

The RPR® Epidemic – Online Valuations vs Trained Appraisers

Consumer protection goes right out the door as consumers learn to trust these online valuations over a local, highly trained appraiser. Realtor Property Resource® is a private automated system just for Realtor® members. They are making great strides in promoting this service, and more and more agents are using this system to create their CMAs to present to owners. I recently reviewed a report provided by the listing agent which included sixty-nine pages of every imaginable piece of information. To an owner, this must look very impressive. However, to anyone who understands what a “Comparable” sale is, this report was...

xml sitemap
blank