Tagged: Uniform Appraisal Dataset

Appraisal news for real estate appraisers and real estate professionals regarding the Uniform Appraisal Dataset. News relating to the Appraisal Industry.

Cert 25 Dilemma: TAF Abdicates Its Role as Ethics Arbiter 18

Cert 25 Dilemma: TAF Abdicates Its Role as Ethics Arbiter

We finally have a direct written response from The Appraisal Foundation regarding the Cert 25 confidentiality crisis and it is a masterclass in bureaucratic buck passing. A peer recently contacted TAF to ask how appraisers can remain compliant with the USPAP Ethics Rule while signing a form that opens the floodgates for data distribution. TAF basically hid under their desks. They claimed they cannot give legal advice and told us that questions about Cert 25 are best suited for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac since they built the form. Then they dropped this standard canned line to try and brush...

Certification 25 and the Quiet Breach of Appraiser Confidentiality 65

Certification 25 and the Quiet Breach of Appraiser Confidentiality

Certification 25 made me realize that my refusal to participate in UAD 3.6 was justified long before I even knew what was buried in its certifications. A peer sent me Phil Crawford’s new podcast episode this morning, and I opened it without thinking much of it because I had assumed his retirement from the show meant he was done weighing in on industry developments. I have been following the news and the chatter around 3.6, but I haven’t been preparing for it. I have not taken any UAD 3.6 classes, have not attended any seminars, have not tested the form,...

Who Controls Access in UAD 3.6 31

Who Controls Access in UAD 3.6

Access has become the most expensive word in the appraisal industry, a reminder that every new “solution” seems to cost appraisers more while giving them less control.  Today’s Tom Sawyer, he gets high on you, and the space he invades, he gets by on you. Those words feel strangely appropriate as the appraisal profession moves into UAD 3.6. The new appraisal environment is not simply a revised form. It is a data-rich, data-driven system built around large amounts of property information being routed directly into appraisal software. Matrix MLS systems already exchange structured data through API-based pathways using standards such...

The Town With No Bank: How Rural America Lost Its Mortgage Lifeline 10

The Town With No Bank: How Rural America Lost Its Mortgage Lifeline

For decades, we’ve been told that the problem is demand. That people don’t want to live in rural America anymore. That lending dried up because the buyers disappeared. That it’s just the market working as it should. But what if we’ve been telling the wrong story? Because when you look closely, when you actually follow the data, the decisions, and the people left behind, it turns out rural America didn’t walk away from mortgage credit. Mortgage credit walked away from rural America. The Collapse of Local Lending Up until the 1980s, a family in a small farming town could walk...

UAD 3.6: The Appraisal Industry’s Shiny New Straightjacket 33

UAD 3.6: The Appraisal Industry’s Shiny New Straightjacket

UAD 3.6, the appraisal industry’s shiny new straitjacket, promises efficiency but threatens to bury appraisers under a mountain of data demands and tech troubles, risking the integrity of valuations in a quest for modernization.  The appraisal industry is bracing for the rollout of the Uniform Appraisal Dataset (UAD) 3.6, a supposed game-changer slated for an optional beta in September 2025 and a mandatory debut by November 2026. Promising to drag appraisal reporting into the modern age with a sleeker, property-specific framework, UAD 3.6 has appraisers across the country muttering a mix of cautious hope and outright skepticism. But let’s be...

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...

Is the GSEs "Appraisal Modernization" Really Just Mass Appraisal? 18

Is the GSE’s “Appraisal Modernization” Really Just Mass Appraisal?

Mass Appraisal tend to exhibit a regressive nature…  In the intricate landscape of real estate mortgage financing, the notion of appraisal waivers recently dubbed “Value Acceptance”, by the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs), has stirred considerable debate. The most recent statistics show Value Acceptance accounts for up to 40% of all mortgage approvals. It is presented as part of the GSEs “Appraisal Modernization” initiative, which aims to streamline the mortgage appraisal process. However, a closer examination reveals potential drawbacks, raising questions about its efficacy and impact on the housing market. Despite its roots in a methodology designed to support appraisers, Value...

UAD Redesign Timeline 5

UAD Redesign Timeline

Appraisers, to see more about the upcoming new UAD currently in design, read the Updated Timeline link in the message below. My concern at this point is ‘training’ materials will be available in Q4 2024, but actual implementation of the ‘new reporting process’ won’t begin until Q3 2025 with limited production, into 2026. Note that in the future “form numbers” won’t be used. Instead, the assignment instructions will be based on a scope of work for the loan process on the particular Subject property. As someone who’s potentially interested in ‘training’ appraisers on the new process, it seems to me...

Racial Bias Complaint Filed Against Me 47

Seller Filed a Racial Bias Complaint Against Me

So what’s caused the sudden loss of income? Could it be because of the racial bias complaint filed against me by an unhappy Seller…  Fannie Mae accomplished what they set out to do in July 2011, when they initiated their Uniform Appraisal Dataset (UAD) and the Uniform Collateral Data Portal. The goal was to collect enough property data to effectively remove appraisers from the home buying and refinancing process. It all started with Dodd-Frank Act, a several hundred pages Act signed into law by then President Obama, sold to unsuspecting Americans as a protection from the corrupt business practices of...

Sale Price versus Appraised Value Disconnect 8

Sale Price vs Appraised Value Disconnect

How can it be said that valuing a property lower than its eventual sale price based on current market evidence is tantamount to BIAS?  The article titled “FHFA Data Fueling Looks into Appraisal Bias” was in the Inside Mortgage Finance Publications e-newsletter on 4/06/23. The Federal Housing Finance Agency is a is a critical provider of the data necessary for oversight, enforcement and research, FHFA Director Sandra Thompson noted during a discussion in late March. According to aggregate statistics from the Uniform Appraisal Dataset released by the FHFA, roughly 57% of appraisals were above the contract price in 2021. Just...