Tagged: Fannie Mae

What is Gross Living Area and What Does it Include 29

What is Gross Living Area (GLA)?

What is Gross Living Area and What Does it Include? Appraisers, There are certain properties where aspects of Gross Living Area (GLA) might not be obvious. It’s more confusing when the selling real estate agents lump all “living space” together, because that’s what they are selling, or when the county assessor includes basements with upper level areas. These include homes with a detached ADU, additional rec room or sleeping space above a garage, additional living space with roof attached to the primary dwelling via covered breezeway, basement living spaces with separate entry, etc. Fannie Mae has a giant book called...

Freddie Mac Proprietary Messages in the UCDP Scheduled for June - Imagecredit Flickr - Patrick McFall 2

Freddie Mac Takes a Bite of the Apple

Freddie Mac Proprietary Messages in the UCDP Not wanting to be left home from the party, Freddie Mac has announced that on June 30, 2015 it will begin providing new feedback on appraisals submitted to it via the Uniform Collateral Data Portal (UCDP). Like Fannie Mae’s system, the messages will be delivered to those lenders seeking to sell residential loans to Freddie Mac. Most of the feedback will be in the form of warnings which essentially alert a lender there are some inconsistencies between the submitted appraisal report and data that Freddie Mac already possesses (like public records). For example,...

Appraisers - The Reason You Have No Business Functional Obsolescence - Imagecredit Flickr - Howard Lake 16

Appraisers – The Reason You Have No Business: Functional Obsolescence

Functional obsolescence is the reason many appraisers are going out of business. On a daily basis, appraisers moan: “It’s because of the HVCC that my business is down” or “that AMC or X or Y or Z caused my income to decline.” Really? Are you sure? So, why is my company buried in business and you’re not? We’ve all heard about blacksmiths being out of work; Seems the use of horses has declined. And the need for typewriter repairmen, the demand just isn’t what it was 20 years ago. The people in these jobs failed to adapt; Maybe appraiser are having the same problem....

Laxer Restrictions - Residential Real Estate Industry & its lobbying groups pushing for looser restrictions on real estate lending - Imagecredit Flickr - Shawn Rossi 8

Laxer Restrictions? Not Again!

Skinning appraisers alive and blaming them for everything except the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa and now pushing for looser restrictions! With the overall economy improving and with unemployment dropping back to more manageable levels, it was only a matter of time before the residential real estate industry (builders, bankers, mortgage lenders, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Wall Street) and its lobbying groups and trade associations popped up and asked for Congress and federal regulators to reduce or end many of the restrictions placed on the industry after it gorged itself on the U.S. economy and left the table with only...

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Unpermitted Additions “Zombie” Assignment Condition

Unpermitted Additions This is a “zombie” assignment condition that seems to never die. Let’s agree that unpermitted means something was constructed without a required written permit. There are plenty of jurisdictions that don’t issue permits because the permit process doesn’t exist. The assignment condition goes something like this: The appraiser is not to include any GLA from any unpermitted additions unless they use comparables that have similar unpermitted additions. Here’s what Fannie Mae stated in their September 2014 FAQs: If the subject property features an unpermitted addition, can the square footage of the unpermitted addition be included in the total gross living area reported on the appraisal report? If the appraiser has identified an addition(s) that does...

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It’s Not a Comp, It’s a Sale; Stop Fannie Mae Lies!

It is merely a SALE… Appraisers, Something’s been gnawing at my craw ever since January when FNMA’s wonderful Collateral Underwriter (CU) was unleashed to the world. And before that, when FNMA’s Appraiser Quality Monitoring (AQM) process was introduced to judge the work of appraisers. No one else has written about this. No one has even mentioned it. So I will:  It has to do with the word “Comp” which is used liberally by Fannie Mae (FNMA). What exactly is a “Comp?” In FNMA’s world, it’s any property that they obtain, either by their vast AVM process which examines millions of...

Thank you Wall Street 3

Thank You Wall Street for Killing off my Hallmark Moments

Thank you Wall Street, your mothers must be very proud of you! I’m not sure when it happened, but sometime in my lifetime the family home stopped being where you chose to live to raise your family and put down roots and became an investment asset. It seems this transformation began when investment bankers on Wall Street first realized residential mortgage lending represented a potential source of huge profits. Prior to the Great Depression, a typical mortgage loan was for 50% of the cost of a home, was interest only, was for 5 years with a balloon payment due at...

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Helpful Appraisal Tips From the Seattle Chapter of the Appraisal Institute

Last Fall I had the pleasure of attending the annual conference presented by the Seattle Chapter of the Appraisal Institute. I was able to sit in on some interesting educational sessions. With all the conversation in industry surrounding CU and other initiatives directly impacting appraisers, I felt highlights from the educational sessions would be beneficial. The following information is from a presentation by Clark Dickson with HomeStreet Bank called, “Appraising for Lenders in Today’s World.” Mr. Dickson’s presentation was about appraisal quality and what it takes to have your appraisal be acceptable in today’s lending environment. He said that everything...

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New Fannie Mae CU Training Video

Training admits that CU use of CENSUS BLOCK GROUPS Appraisers, FNMA has released a new training video that helps lenders understand how to PROPERLY use Collateral Underwriter, which in some cases has not been happening since Jan. 26, 2015. By reviewing this info, you can learn how to write reports that pass the CU evaluations, and make your reports more complete and accurate. But keep reading. One thing I find interesting is CU assigns a unique ‘appraiser number’ for every appraiser who has reports submitted by Lenders to the CU. They don’t just use the appraiser’s license number by itself. Secondly, this...

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CU and Appraiser Regulation

Whether you believe Fannie Mae’s comprehensive rollout of Collateral Underwriter will finally weed out the lazy form-fillers or it will end up euthanizing the aging residential leg of the profession once and for all, is not the subject of this article. There are plenty of blogs, articles, and seminars that are wrestling with the efficacy of CU and its long-term impact. To be sure, the profession has entered the new age of big data. Residential appraisers will need to navigate regression analysis, heat maps, trend lines, oblique aerial images, and especially how to tie it all together into something meaningful. From...

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