Real estate and appraisal education
In January the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a new set of regulations relating to appraisals. While the new regulation isn’t too different from the old, it does place every appraiser square in the bulls’ eye of lawsuits. If you’re not aware of this, hang on, this is going to hurt a bit.…
Read more
Appraisers and lending institutions – Maybe the best way to explain the “Customary and Reasonable” appraisal fee problem is to provide excerpts from one of many class action lawsuits that have been filed against the lenders.
Understand, the text I’ve listed below is not my opinion but is part of the claims by plaintiffs …
Read more
That’s what I hear every single day, talking to real estate real estate professionals while trying to help them understand real estate and …
Read more
The settlement announced on February 9, 2012 has costs far greater than $25 Billion.
In 2007 a coalition of 35 attorneys general and state banking examiners launched a cooperative effort, called the State Foreclosure Prevention Working Group. For years, I’ve been communicating with the staff of several State Attorneys’ General. We’ve profiled what was …
Read more
The current collapse of our economy will be the fourth time I’ve been to this rodeo. You’d think we would have learned the lesson by now. The last time the entire United States went through the same issues and problems was back in the mid 80’s, and here …
Read more
I’m a real estate appraiser, like many others. I’m also an expert witness tasked with helping courts understand the lending and appraisal business. While one side or the other may hire me as the expert witness, I’m required to be an unbiased third party, there …
Read more
Last evening I had a nice discussion with a person from a software company. He described how two versions of an appraisal could exist; my tech. friends call it “normalization.”
Data from an appraisal form can be stripped out, via a half-dozen methods. I know …
Read more
Unfortunately cops, from patrol officers to police chiefs have become involved in real estate and mortgage fraud, and most officers don’t know it. Now the last thing any of us needs are cops becoming involved in felonies . . …
Read more
Mortgage brokers, you were set up to be the “fall guys” the “patsy” in the next “S&L Bail out.” Having mortgage brokers blamed for our mortgage mess was planned about fifteen …
Read more
People, loans, and money are seeking out and moving toward quality. To survive in this market, you need to understand this fundamental shift.
Late one evening last week, I sat in the corporate offices of one of the nations largest mortgage lenders and watched the owners break down and cry at the thought that …
Read more
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? …
Read more
In many instances the way the banking business is run today, it looks like appraisers are the beaten victims of school yard bullies. Appraisers sometimes call the bullies by their generic names AMC or Bank. Before we go further, let’s look at some definitions.
Victim (Noun)
FIRREA, and to a certain degree USPAP, came about due to the failures, within the banking and appraisal systems, that lead to the S&L Bailout of ‘80s.
Definitions that we use today for client, intended user, confidentiality and, “scope of work” …
Read more
Every week 12,346 appraisals fail to pass the GSEs basic screening “review.” In this case the screening, or “review,” is performed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s new Uniform Mortgage Data Program (UMDP). These numbers comes from the recent report by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Office of Inspector