Mark, I spoke with him. He does have some valid points. He and I disagree vehemently about some of the specifics, but he does have a lot of background. He has more of a macro view inside government systems rather than our isolated agencies or political influence focus in dealing with individual claims and issues..

It would be interesting to see how or IF bulk consolidated complaints could be addressed. If I understood him correctly, its targetting the lenders (primarily).

Good dialogue beats a bad argument every time.

Please keep it up! Proud of y’all!

While I disagreed, your points are very valid and they vent the frustration of being professional and then hearing a “politician” say appraisers are … It got me reading these boards. It isn’t fair.

I will reach out.

Been there-done that re paragraphs. I really appreciate your taking the time to revise it.

As for bias, there is permissible human bias versus impermissible bias or advocacy. My bias suggests to me that all other factors being equal, oceanfront property is going to sell more than one that is inland across the street from a municipal sewage treatment plant.

We attempt to qualify or quantify these subjective biases. If we can’t, then we should not be adjusting for them.

The larger issue is one of alleged systemic racism. Outside of census tract, locational algorithm-powered AVMs, I’ve never seen it by appraisers. I HAVE seen it from private lenders. I suspect it may exist among some GSEs as well but I cannot prove it. Suspicion does not equate to fact.

The racist appraisal meme started by one borrower who had suspect apparent ulterior motives. HER company is currently trying out Hybrid AAV’s in New England. Look up Black Knight and their SCOUT program.

It’s an unfortunate coincidence that the meme fits into a political party’s agenda that broad-spectrum racism is alive and well in America today. It may or may not be, but in the appraisal, BY appraisers, it is non-existent in my 35 years of experience.

There may be prejudiced appraisers (of all races) but none are so ignorant as to ever let it interfere with their professional work, or show it before their fellow appraisers.

AGA can’t speak for the other appraisal organizations, but as far as WE are concerned, we will fight back against unsubstantiated allegations. Our standing offer remains:

At no charge to any party, AGA will volunteer to perform comparative appraisal reviews or analyses of appraisals in any of these cases where before and after ‘white washing’ racist based values are alleged.

If state coalitions or other peer professional associations want to join us in this we welcome their collaboration.

I would love the opportunity to speak with you.. even if you want to conceal your real name and more. I’m intrigued by your comments and while I’ll stand by my blog post, I’m always up for great discussion and more. Let me know if you’d like to discuss sometime. My email is wiwapp@gmail.com. Thanks for taking the time to write what you did.

Well you know what they say, pick your clients carefully. They can manage both manual underwriting and default dispositions quite differently. “From the shoes of a buyer, and a seller at the same time.” Principal of substitution, the only non advocate involved, all of that.

The language is being steered. Discerning values through informed judgment calls is not an implicit unavoidable bias, but rather is an action of well informed market measurements using sound logic, which is acquired by having thorough understanding of what drives market participants decisions. Be it the material quality, effective age, surrounding economic and demographic factors, location and amenity. Thankfully for residential appraisers we only review local examples so extrapolating basic measurements from market data is usually simple and non-complex.

If the argument is home values differentials from distant locations, that is guided by the local market participants navigation of the economic and location considerations, which fall under economy and governance, someone elses department. One tends to lean towards quick analysis such as crime and income comparisons for simple explanations of disparity, but city management, taxes, and the over all balance of area amenity are also measurable driving forces.

Appraisers just measure and report the activity which is existing and ongoing in a specific location. The outsiders can call measured market disparities racism if they want, but that does not mean it’s true. Even if it were true, the appraiser did not create that difference, but merely applied a measurement to market data, to form a specific and well informed home value conclusion. The accusation is however helpful in furthering expansion of taxpayer funded private partnership engagements in the mortgage sector. We can see the dollar signs lighting up in their eyes from way over here.

LOL … I put in paragraphs, but when I copied them in, it just all ran together! Sorry about that.

There are huge differences while we speak, but take an appraisal into court and that is no longer true because there is only one discussion and that revolves around Equal Housing; USPAP isn’t debatable in court because it isn’t law or regulation. So all the variations of bias have one thing in common – bias.

When any of those biases are detected they can have merit behind them, for instance documented by “paired analysis” or “bracketing” seems benign, but when another appraiser comes to the same discussion and used different sales to make that assessment, what exactly happens to bias? It explodes like a toxic cocktail of opinions. Now lenders can say they are confused because the appraisers are not coming to a simple, one value answer.

The next move in the process is to decide which value to use, or maybe to decline the loan all together. The feuding of opinions is therefore a weapon of “get me out of this loan” used by the lender. This is why appraisers are perceived this way. Lenders blame you. Realtors blame you. Borrowers blame you. But all you were trying to do was the right thing, and so was the second appraiser, but the lender, they knew the secondary market could make this same argument and don’t want to repurchase the loan and argue for a third party (appraiser); so they declined the loan and said “inadequate collateral”.

The only way to remedy this is to get a mouthpiece and start running on it! How did lenders get away with 2008 and not a single arrest? They blamed you and the appraisers response is locked in history on the ASB/NAR websites … scary to think about it, but they stood silent and there are no comments from them protecting appraisers.

It is 13 years later and the President of the United States is saying what the industry said in 2008 – it was the appraiser!

In my world, it is the guideline and then the responsiveness to it by the lender. In my last case, a guideline was assigned to values, values are irrelevant and in one MSA could be the highest sale and in another MSA be the lowest sale. That is why guidelines are the problem and not appraisers. Lenders are smart enough to put in guidelines where “known risks occur” so they get kicked out of the underwriting process and “reviewed”. Then the lender can say “decline” if they want to.

I hope this is helpful to the appraisers because I came here to help, not be a jerk. My opinion comes from years of working with FinCEN, HUD, DOJ, Secret Service and regulatory agencies and always reminding them “we aren’t here to look at the lender as much as we are here to advocate for the victims”. Banks are victims too …

All the best!

Glad some of that made sense … Sorry if my words are flat and static, there is a real person behind those comments who works in your industry everyday. I am an investigator speaking and not an active appraiser. So keeping that in mind, understand my opinion (bias) is coming from the victim’s perspective and that shouldn’t be comfortable for anyone. I believe appraisers should take steps to protect themselves and not let an industry make it easier to scapegoat them.

Im interested in your perspective.

However my eyes couldn’t take your format any longer.

There is a huge difference between personal bias or preferences, and bias that is racism.

PS- paragraphs! Or at least periodic line spacing. This isnt a cheap shot. I really wanted to read what you posted.

You honestly make some valid points, but the way in which you communicate your message just rubs me the wrong way.

With all that appraisers have been through over the previous 15 years, this will be what the AMCs lobby to use to remove Appraisers from the process and put the FOX completely in charge of the HEN HOUSE.

Be careful what you wish for…once the Professional Appraiser is out, there will be NO ONE to protect the public trust.

Great points New Era, but managing ones own appraisal panel is not a substitute for intelligence. Just this week, I had a VP of Real Estate contact me directly asking about why my adjustments didn’t match those that were reflected within the collateral underwriter (he sent me a copy!). Does it matter that we are prohibited from seeing a copy or displays of the CU findings, that lenders are prohibited from, making demands of, or providing instruction to appraisers based solely on the CU automated output, or using CU to interfere with the independent judgement of the appraiser, etc., of course not. Even after providing him will this knowledge (Did he not know, scary, or knew but didn’t care, scarier), he still pushed for an explanation about why the single line adjustment for GLA was not equal to the sales price per sf.

When VP’s of real estate / upper management don’t know the basics of appraising a property, what hope do we have when the borrower calls to complain about the appraiser (racist)? Do you think upper management would squash the complaint by explaining to the borrower the do’s and don’ts and the guidelines of the appraisal? Of course not, under the bus the appraiser goes.

Seek the truth.

While no appraiser is saying racism does not exist, and no one is saying these cases aren’t real…Everyone is perplexed that there has been no official Appraisal Board complaint filed, nor have any details of these conflicting reports been revealed. How can we sincerely address this issue without those things happening?

And in the meantime, the narrative is spreading across the internet with no signs of stopping. Until we can establish independently that these appraisals were deliberately biased, and hold the individual appraisers accountable, this effort is doing nothing productive.

The public needs to be informed and be aware that there are those that will use anything they can to remove the independent Professional Appraiser from the lending equation and that these efforts have been in the works for years…way before this recent issue arose. Those people consider the Appraiser to be a hindrance to their ability to continue their predatory lending practices that take advantage of borrowers, especially first time borrowers.

Can we say “Countrywide”?

Here is a link to article mentioned by Julio E Sune – however you must be a paid subscriber to see it.

https://www.valuationreview.com/VR/ArticlesVR/Racial-biasdiscrimination-in-appraising-a-legal-vi-82439.aspx