Tagged: discrimination

The Irreconcilable Conflict Between USPAP's Typical Buyer Standard and the Current Fair Housing Compliance Regime 8

USPAP’s Typical Buyer Standard in the Fair Housing Era

The Irreconcilable Conflict Between USPAP’s Typical Buyer Standard and the Current Fair Housing Compliance Regime. Retain this document as a reference should you face a complaint grounded in disparate impact theory alone. The three-safeguard framework from Inclusive Communities provides a robust defense for any appraiser whose methodology is USPAP-compliant, well-documented, and market-supported. Introduction I want to state plainly what the appraisal profession has been tiptoeing around since roughly 2019: an appraiser cannot simultaneously comply with: 1-  USPAP’s requirement to identify and analyze the most probable (typical) buyer of a property via market data AND… 2- comply with the current iteration...

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

Bias Accusation Collapses as HUD Clears the Appraiser 50

Bias Accusation Collapses as HUD Clears the Appraiser

HUD just confirmed what the appraisal showed from day one: the accusation never had a pulse.  If you read the original article about Steve Orlowski, the Illinois appraiser dragged through a multi year circus over a baseless bias allegation, you probably walked away thinking that surely this nightmare had to end at some point. The state had already taken its shot, the facts were already sitting in plain view, and nothing in the report supported the accusation. But as every appraiser knows, once a complaint enters the system, it tends to move forward on momentum alone, even when the foundation...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / HUD / The US Department of Housing and Urban Development / Trending

A Baseless Bias Claim Turns Into a State Appraisal Crusade 30

A Baseless Bias Claim Turns Into a State Appraisal Crusade

This is the story of how a false bias allegation became the basis for an aggressive, unjustified prosecution by the state appraisal board.  My name is Steve Orlowski, and I am a retired Illinois Certified Residential Real Estate Appraiser. In November 2020, I conducted a property appraisal. The owner deemed my value low by more than $100,000. He only complained to the State of Illinois Department of Real Estate and filed a racism complaint with HUD; he didn’t submit a reconsideration of value. Following an informal hearing, the State of Illinois Appraisal Board required me to acknowledge my wrongdoing, complete...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisal Organizations / Appraisers News / IDFPR / Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation

When Protecting Tenants Starts With Targeting Property Rights 29

When Protecting Tenants Starts With Targeting Property Rights

When officials start treating property rights like a rounding error, every appraiser in the room knows the market’s about to need a stress test. New York City has never been short on bold ideas, but Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s latest appointment to the city’s Office to Protect Tenants has managed to ignite a firestorm before even warming the chair. His pick, Cea Weaver, arrives with a resurfaced video and a digital paper trail that would make any seasoned housing professional pause. Between her past social‑media proclamations like “seize private property” and her declaration that homeownership is “a weapon of white supremacy,”...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Trending

Waste, Fraud & Abuse Flourished Under Former Secretary Fudge 14

Waste, Fraud & Abuse Flourished Under Former Secretary Fudge

Appraisers harassed by HUD under Fudge know far more waste, fraud, and abuse is still buried. A report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found that more than $5 billion in taxpayer funds were paid to unknown parties during former HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge’s final year atop the agency. The payments reportedly included aid to roughly 30,000 deceased individuals and thousands of ineligible recipients. In fiscal year 2024, according to the report: $77 million was paid to deceased tenants $150 million went to recipients with non-existent Social Security Numbers $288 million went to pay excessively high rents...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / HUD / The US Department of Housing and Urban Development

App-solutely Clueless: When Sales Tries to School Appraisers 30

App-solutely Clueless: When Sales Tries to School Appraisers

A newly funded bias-checking app claims to fix appraisal discrimination, by sidelining appraisers, duplicating existing standards, and redefining valuation from the sales floor.  Appraisers, this bit of news about a new bias checking app fluttered across my office floor the other day, causing me to trip. From the article: “…eliminate home appraisal bias, which happens when Black homeowners’ properties or properties in predominately Black neighborhoods are valued less than comparable properties owned by white households or in primarily white neighborhoods.” This new electronic theoretical bias checker was developed by three women in Philadelphia, who ARE NOT appraisers. Instead, they are...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Trending

A Review of MEIN COMP: The Last Appraiser 33

A Review of MEIN COMP: The Last Appraiser

If Orwell moonlighted as an appraiser, and Kafka had a side hustle in compliance, “MEIN COMP: The Last Appraiser” by David Samnick would be their love child. But this isn’t dystopian fantasy, it’s a forensic autopsy of a profession that was methodically dismantled while regulators smiled, and algorithms sharpened their knives. Samnick’s book is fiction the way a courtroom sketch is fiction. The names are changed, but the faces are familiar, and the tactics are real. Through a cast of fictional appraisers, each representing a phase in the slow-motion collapse of independent valuation, we witness the insertion of middlemen, the...

AMC / Appraisal / Appraisal Management Companies / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Trending

No, Appraisers Didn’t Cause America’s Racial Wealth Gap 19

No, Appraisers Didn’t Cause America’s Racial Wealth Gap

Appraisers are being dragged into the racial wealth gap debate, but the real gap is between racial accusation and actual evidence, and courts aren’t buying it.  After years of feckless payouts by insurance companies and corporations, the era of using the courts to harass appraisers for their value opinions has ended. Last week, a U.S. District Court judge in Maryland threw out a discrimination lawsuit on summary judgment. It was brought against an appraiser by a militant professor at Johns Hopkins University and his wife, who passed away since the filing of the suit. She, too, was a professor at...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Trending

TEAPOTS Exposed: The PAVE Initiative’s Illusion of Justice 29

TEAPOTS Exposed: The PAVE Initiative’s Illusion of Justice

The PAVE Initiative’s lack of TEAPOTS case entries reveals a fraudulent scheme that betrayed homeowners, vilified appraisers, and hid the truth from Congress.  The Biden administration’s PAVE Task Force initiative was never a legally engineered program to uncover racial bias in the appraisal industry. It was, as I have now uncovered, a systemic administrative illusion: a complex, bureaucratic apparatus designed to justify federal grant funding, inflate internal performance metrics, and maintain political optics — not to administer justice. This wasn’t enforcement. This was theft of government funds dressed in legal theater. Homeowners were deceived. Appraisers were targeted. The law was...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / FHA / HUD / The US Department of Housing and Urban Development

The Perfect Storm: A Veteran’s Take on a Dying Craft 100

The Appraisal Profession’s Perfect Storm: A Veteran’s Take on a Dying Craft

The new UAD form, the AMC fee gouging, the waivers, the false bias claims. It’s a perfect storm of assaults.  I’ve been an appraiser since 1993, back when fax machines were cutting-edge and the internet was a clunky novelty. Over three decades, I’ve seen this profession weather storms, economic crashes, regulatory overhauls, you name it. But what’s happening now? It’s not a storm; it’s a tsunami. Our industry is hemorrhaging talent, drowning under false accusations, and getting squeezed by corporate greed and bureaucratic overreach. As someone who’s stubbornly refused to bend the knee to Appraisal Management Companies (AMCs), I’m here...

AMC / Appraisal / Appraisal Management Companies / Appraisal News / Appraisal Organizations / Appraisal Subcommittee

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