Category: Trending

What’s trending now and what was trending in the past on AppraisersBlogs – Discover and discuss developing and trending stories on the latest news, ideas and perspectives happening now and in the past in our industry

The Appraisal Fee Lawsuit AMCs Deserve 18

The Appraisal Fee Lawsuit AMCs Can’t Outrun

The class action lawsuit filed against CrossCountry Mortgage and Class Valuation arrives at a moment when many in the appraisal profession have grown tired of watching Appraisal Management Companies (AMCs) drain the industry from the inside. Appraisers have described AMCs as unnecessary middlemen who inflate fees, hide their cuts, interfere with the work, and contribute nothing of substance. This case finally puts those practices into the record with a level of clarity that appraisers have been waiting for. The complaint describes how borrowers are charged appraisal fees that often exceed one thousand dollars, yet the appraiser receives only a fraction...

AMC / Appraisal / Appraisal Management Companies / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Customary & Reasonable Fees

Jan Bellas 22

Honoring Jan Bellas, Our Greatest Advocate

Jan Bellas passed away on July 7, 2026, and those of us in the appraisal profession who knew her are grieving someone who was far more than a colleague. Jan wasn’t an appraiser, yet she carried the weight of our struggles as if they were her own. She understood the pressures, the unfair treatment, the isolation, the frustration, and the constant fight to be heard, and she absorbed all of it. She had a way of making appraisers feel lighter the moment they called her. You could pick up the phone in the middle of a crisis, whether it was...

AGA / Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisal Organizations / Appraisers News / The American Guild of Appraisers

The Board Has Spoken, and AMCs Should Pay Attention 16

The Board Has Spoken, and AMCs Should Pay Attention

The Board handled this case with the same patience appraisers have when an AMC sends “preferred comps” from another planet.  Virginia’s Real Estate Appraiser Board delivered a message at its June meeting that was impossible to miss. An attorney appeared on behalf of Financial Asset Services and Brandon Sison, asking the Board to reconsider the discipline handed down in March. The request arrived without the AMC or Sison themselves, which already set an interesting tone. When you ask a regulatory board to undo a suspension, showing up in person is usually a good start. The March decision was clear. The...

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

The Irreconcilable Conflict Between USPAP's Typical Buyer Standard and the Current Fair Housing Compliance Regime 33

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 / Trending / Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice / USPAP

Systemic Failures in FHA Appraisal and Loan Review 39

Systemic Failures in FHA Appraisal and Loan Review

This case exposed the cracks in an FHA system where failures by the lender, the AMC, and the review process aligned in ways that no borrower could have anticipated. It shows how easily an appraisal error can escalate when every safeguard designed to prevent harm breaks down at the same time. When the first article about this case ran on July 15, 2024, it already raised serious concerns about how an FHA appraisal could miss something as basic as the type of water and sewer service. What has emerged since then paints a much larger picture, one that shows how...

AMC / Appraisal / Appraisal Management Companies / Appraisal News / Appraisers News / Federal Housing Administration

Bias Accusation Collapses as HUD Clears the Appraiser 51

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

Pickleball, Promises, and the Quiet Takeover of Appraisal 36

Pickleball, Promises, and the Quiet Takeover of Appraisal

While they’re busy flexing their pickleball paddles, the real play is a bill quietly strip‑mining appraisers’ work. “Fair warning, we take our pickleball as seriously as we take our appraisal tech.” That showed up in my inbox this week as part of a promotion for the Appraiser’s Conference and Trade Show 2026. Smiling emojis, rally invites, reminders to book meetings with onboarding teams and partnership managers, all wrapped in a message about staying ahead of what’s next. I have been in a slowdown for four years now, so when something like that comes across my screen, it lands differently. A...

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

Flags Over Facts: The Road to Obsolescence 62

Flags Over Facts: The Road to Obsolescence

The latest round of modernization comes wrapped in friendly language, but the flags are hard to miss if you’ve been paying attention.  For years, appraisers have been warning that the mortgage industry was slowly engineering us out of the process. We were told we were paranoid. Resistant to change. Stuck in the past. Then the newest Mortgage Credit Executive Order arrived, and the appraisal section opened with a single line that confirmed everything we’ve been saying: expand AVMs, desktops, hybrids, and AI. That’s the priority. Everything else in that section is just polite filler wrapped around a strategy to shrink...

Appraisal / Appraisal News / Appraisal Organizations / Appraisal Software / Appraisal Subcommittee / Appraisers News

Suspended: The AMC That Turned Review Into a Value Demand 36

Suspended: The AMC That Turned “Review” Into a Value Demand

Financial Asset Services and its chief appraiser did not just cross the line of appraiser independence, they marched past it so boldly that the Virginia Board suspended them both. In a rare twist involving a reverse mortgage, the push for a lower value became so aggressive that the Board ultimately issued a second suspended license to drive the point home.  The Virginia Coalition of Appraiser Professionals recently highlighted a case that should make every appraiser pause. Financial Asset Services (FAS) was hired to manage a reverse mortgage appraisal, a product where the pressure often runs in the opposite direction. Instead...

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

The Trainee Inside the Fast and Cheap Model 32

The Trainee Inside the Fast and Cheap Model

The trainee walked into a job expecting mentorship and instead found a crash course in misconduct.  There is a widening gap in this industry between the people who actually protect the public trust and the people who only talk about it. A recent Reddit post from a Georgia trainee captured that gap with uncomfortable clarity. Not because his experience was unusual, but because it showed exactly what happens when the demand for fast and cheap collides with a profession built on accuracy, accountability, and real judgment. The trainee described a year of being sent out alone to inspect properties, told...

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

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