Tagged: podcast

The New Con: Hybrids, Waivers & AMCs Threaten Public Trust 65

The New Con: Hybrids, Waivers & AMCs Threaten Public Trust

Hybrid Appraisals, Appraisal Waivers and Appraisal Management Companies are the new Con.  Last month marked the 7-year anniversary of Appraiser Fest. The conference was truly like nothing that had been done before. It was organized by appraisers for appraisers. The agenda was more about bringing the profession together and protecting the public trust. Appraiser Fest was not about promoting the profit of others at the expense of appraisers; nor was it about hiding the unchecked facts of fraud and ill doings against consumers. It was about public awareness and trust. It all started with a renewed sense of energy with...

AMC / Appraisal / Appraisal Management Companies / Appraisal News / Appraisal Organizations / Appraisers News

How Synthetic Appraisals Fuel a Fraud-Filled Housing Bubble 24

How Deep Fakes Have Burrowed Into Home Finance

Fannie and Freddie have been toiling at the coalface of “synthetic appraisals” – “black box valuations.”  In the 1960s, technocrats at the Pentagon used the latest IBM mainframe computers to analyze complex data related to the Vietnam War. Planners fed punch cards into the machines and ran endless simulations, hoping to determine strategies for winning the war. In 1967, analysts finally asked the computer, “When will we win in Vietnam?” The machine’s answer: “You won in 1965.” It exposed the hubris and naiveté of those who believed computer-generated models could capture and quantify millions of complex human interactions on the...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Automated Valuation Models / AVM / Fannie Mae - Freddie Mac

The Harassment Campaign Against Mom-and-Pop Appraisers 12

Stoked by HUD, Cottage Industry Shakes Down Mom-and-Pop Appraisers

The harassment campaign benefits a number of odd bedfellows: the housing lobby, which wants unfettered access to federal funds and taxpayer-backed mortgage guarantees through Freddie, Fannie and the FHA – they see appraisals as an unnecessary bottleneck. A firm called Mizrahi Kroub is the largest filer of so-called “digital Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuits.” The New York law firm files about a quarter of all such cases nationwide, according to a provider of web-accessibility services. The firm, which employs nine lawyers, has brought more than 1,100 web-accessibility cases against small businesses for missing alt-text, incorrectly formatting lists or providing unclear...

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

Fannie Mae to State of Maryland: DROP DEAD 33

Fannie Mae to Maryland: DROP DEAD

Mortgage giant Fannie Mae and her twin, Freddie Mac, have a message for the State of Maryland: Kindly disintegrate. A snubbed Maryland task force is close to filing its report to the governor. It attempted, in vain, to obtain detailed information about the government-sponsored twins’ valuation algorithms – tools that have replaced many home appraisals in the Old-Line State and resulted, some contend, in a feedback loop and run-up in home prices. The task force was formed on the reasonable premise that the state has an interest in the twins’ activities, since Marylanders will be left with the clean-up costs,...

Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Automated Valuation Models / AVM / Collateral Underwriter / CU

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

Recap of the 4th Appraisal Bias Hearing 11

Recap of the 4th ASC Appraisal Bias Hearing

On February 13th, 2024, the fourth ASC appraisal bias hearing took place. For those who were unable to attend, the video of the hearing has been included below. The hearing was a crucial event for the appraisal industry, and it is important for all appraisers to be aware of the discussions and topics addressed. The panel of witnesses included: David Bunton, President, The Appraisal Foundation E.C. Neelly IV, Executive Director, Mississippi Real Estate Appraisal Board Maureen Sweeney, Principal, Maureen Sweeney, Real Estate Appraiser Ltd. Melissa Tran, Director, Texas Appraiser Licensing and Certification Board Jillian White, Chief Executive Officer, Appraisal Insights...

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

Fannie's Loan Buyback Sophistry Relies on Modifying Analysts' Behavior 9

Fannie’s Loan Buyback Sophistry Relies on Modifying Analysts’ Behavior

“Many of the repurchase letters make no sense,” said the insider. If analysts don’t write enough defects on those files, they get hammered. If analysts fall short of their peers in “production points,” it’s considered their fault, said the insider.  At the heart of Fannie Mae’s valuation system is a tool that shunts a subset of the millions of loans purchased by the mortgage giant each year into a “high risk” pool. Fannie then pressures and incentivizes a corps of in-house analysts to create further doubt about the loans in order to send repurchase demands to lenders for up to...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Collateral Underwriter / CU / Fannie Mae - Freddie Mac

Dazzled by Wizardry, Federal Mortgage Regulators Ignore Zillow Debacle 17

Dazzled by Wizardry, Federal Mortgage Regulators Ignore Zillow Debacle

This rulemaking is one more sign that federal bureaucrats are all in on a whacky plan to use technical wizardry to tease out the value of individual properties across the country… Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was a committed technocrat. Under his direction, a team of policy advisors descended into the Pentagon’s cavernous basement in 1967. They fed punch cards into the basement’s IBM mainframe computers with everything that could be quantified about the Vietnam War. Numbers of ships, tanks, transport helicopters, gunships, fixed-wing aircraft, artillery, troop strength, machine guns, ammo. They queried the computers, “What year will we win...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Automated Valuation Models / AVM / CFPB

Woke 'Bounty' Bill Will Chill Speech of New York Appraisers 8

Woke ‘Bounty’ Bill Will Chill Speech of New York Appraisers

A bill being crafted by the New York state Senate’s Finance Committee would, in effect, place a $2,000 bounty on the head of any heretical real estate appraiser in the Empire State who dares conclude a value that fails to satisfy a seller, serial refinancer or commissioned broker in a deal. Vulnerable buyers, who could be paying off inflated loans based on coerced values, would simply have to live with it. If enacted, the bill would authorize fines to be levied on appraisers for a new category of thoughtcrime – something called “appraisal discrimination.” Half the proceeds from the fines...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Fannie Mae - Freddie Mac / Political Action

Fannie Mae Bullies Lenders, Ensnares Appraisers in Farcical Probes 15

FNMA Ensnares Appraisers in Farcical Probes

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...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Automated Valuation Models / AVM / Fannie Mae - Freddie Mac

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