Tagged: copyright

Obscure Federal Official Has Hatched ‘Sick Chicken’ in Housing Sector 18

Obscure Federal Official Has Hatched ‘Sick Chicken’ in Housing Sector

The case eventually found its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it came to be known to the public as the “Sick Chicken Case”  It was the Great Depression’s bleakest year – 1933. At President Roosevelt’s urging, Congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act, a New Deal bill that partially ceded lawmaking authority to private organizations and industry boards to develop codes of conduct that would then be enforced on citizens as binding law. The owners of poultry producer Schechter Poultry Corp. were indicted for violating the new private business code for the poultry industry. The chicken men lawyered...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisal Organizations / Appraisal Subcommittee / Appraisers News / ASC

ChatGPT Appraisal Error Sparks Ethics Debate 40

ChatGPT Appraisal Error Sparks Ethics Debate

A recent post by an appraiser trainee on an online forum described a troubling situation involving the use of ChatGPT to generate content for an appraisal report. The trainee admitted to using ChatGPT to write a market summary section without properly reviewing it first. This resulted in factual inaccuracies making it into the final report delivered to the client. Upon discovering this, the client, a local bank, threatened to file a complaint against the trainee. The trainee is now considering falsely claiming to have personally written the problematic section in an attempt to avoid consequences. “Hey everyone, I recently used...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Trending / Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice / USPAP

Reindeer Standards As Unenforceable As Appraisal Code 8

Reindeer Standards As Unenforceable As Appraisal Code

There’s a lot to like about the bylaws of the Association of World Reindeer Herders. The code defines how herders promote professional, commercial and cultural contact in all matters related to reindeer herding. The document sets the gold standard for disseminating information world over about reindeer husbandry. The bylaws were approved at the first Congress of World Reindeer Herders on March 2, 1997. If you don’t like the 1997 version of the bylaws, there’s a 2001 version, a 2009 version and a 2013 version. Are the group’s bylaws enforceable in the United States? No. As commendable and insightful as they...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / HUD / The US Department of Housing and Urban Development / Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice

Those Pesky Words... Words Considered Biased 24

‘Pesky’ Words. Keeping Appraisers out of Language Purgatory

Appraisers, on July 17, 2023, a document from Freddie Mac was circulated to numerous appraisers around the US which identified certain words and other info that can be considered to be ‘BIASED’ in appraisal reports. Here is the Link to the Bulletin. We need to step back for a moment and carefully analyze and consider why that was done, and what it means to appraisers. In many ways, appraisers forget the purpose of the appraisal assignment – which is to value real estate. In other words, the physical structures tied to the land. But too often, elements of personal or...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Fannie Mae - Freddie Mac / Federal Housing Administration / FHA

How U.S. Home Valuations Are Being Subverted 21

How U.S. Home Valuations Are Being Subverted

At the crossroads of it all is a campaign to weaken or eliminate valuations… The nonprofit is now exploring ways it can set standards for automated valuations… Expect greater distortions from Freddie and Fannie’s plodding and committee-driven foray into automated valuations.  Sometimes when the hair on the back of your neck stands up, there’s a reason for it. The nation’s $11 trillion mortgage market has been nationalized. This coup occurred in broad daylight and gradually. With Freddie and Fannie now in their second decade in federal conservatorship, the prospect that they will ever again be subjected to the watchful eye...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisal Organizations / Appraisal Subcommittee / Appraisers News / ASC

Two Cheers for an 'Evolved' Beltway Entrepreneur... David Bunton 27

Two Cheers for an ‘Evolved’ Beltway Entrepreneur… David Bunton

We come not to bury David Bunton, the public figure, but to praise David Bunton, the evolved Beltway organism. Who is David Bunton? Bunton has made a small fortune and canvassed the world at the helm of a 16-employee Washington, D.C., nonprofit that publishes a copyrighted code of conduct. The code gives his tiny fiefdom a big say in how collateral in the nation’s $11 trillion mortgage market is valued. He is a figure with outsized power in an immense market. His day-to-day funding source? For 30 years, his nonprofit, known as the Appraisal Foundation, has sold copies of its...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisal Organizations / Appraisers News / Fannie Mae - Freddie Mac / The Appraisal Foundation

Justice for Texas Appraiser? You Bet. Price Tag: $99,000 9

Justice for Texas Appraiser? You Bet. Price Tag: $99,000

The Texas Appraiser Licensing and Certification Board is a hot mess, but one with a malicious and callous streak. That makes it dangerous to licensees. The Unclean Hands Doctrine is a legal defense. It helps prevent petitioners who are engaged in fraud, deceit or bad faith from recovering certain damages from others. If you’re a known cattle rustler yourself, the Unclean Hands defense may keep you from recovering damages if your own cattle go missing. It’s also sometimes called the “Clean Hands Doctrine” or the “Dirty Hands Doctrine.” Based on this doctrine, the feculent fingers of the Texas Appraiser Licensing...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisal Organizations / Appraisers News / TALCB / Texas Appraiser Licensing & Certification Board

Appraiser Will Help Expose Occupational Licensing Abuses Nationwide 13

Exposing Occupational Licensing Abuses Nationwide

She went from viewing occupational licensing as a necessary means to protect the safety and welfare of the public to a cynical tool promoted by established businesses to erect barriers against innovation and competition. Her experience as a licensed real property appraiser in West Virginia turned out to be the perfect training ground for the study of public corruption, restraint of trade and government overreach. Who would have thought it? After 27 years of being whipsawed by West Virginia’s notorious appraiser-licensing apparatus, the Appraisal Foundation – and the latter’s continually changing copyrighted standards – and a complicit federal monitor, Lori...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisal Organizations / Appraisers News / The Appraisal Foundation

Floor Plans Could Be an Issue in Appraising 12

Floor Plans Could Be an Issue in Appraising

…concerns that appraisers could be sued for making floor plans of a home… I’m an AI “member” (because I pay membership dues) even though I’m not supposed to say it that way. Technically, I am an Appraisal Institute Practicing Affiliate. Regardless, an AI email earlier on 6/29/22 had this news: Supreme Court Rejects Floor Plan Case; Appraisers Vulnerable The Supreme Court on June 27 rejected a case involving the use of floor plans in marketing materials. Multiple real estate firms petitioned the court to review the case, contending the Eighth Circuit incorrectly ruled that using floor plans in marketing materials...

AI / Appraisal / Appraisal Institute / Appraisal News / Appraisal Organizations / Appraisers News

Is an Appraisal Report Considered Intellectual Property? - Appraisers Blogs 8

Are Reports Intellectual Property?

Recently one of my Mastermind students asked about Intellectual Property. He told me that he’d had an associate leave his firm to go solo. Later, he was reading one of his former-associate’s reports and found the now-independent associate’s reports looked a lot like his in format, and even language. My student asked me if this was wrong. Well, I’m not a lawyer, but there are some sound issues to consider here. If you write something, if you are its author, it is your intellectual property. You can either trademark it (like a logo), or copyright it (like a novel). We...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice / USPAP

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