Appraisal Buzz Staff

It seems all anyone in the industry is talking about recently is the announcement of Fannie Mae's appraisal review tool Collateral Underwriter (CU). Appraisers want to know how this will affect their past appraisals and what it will mean for their appraisals in the future. Who has rights to the data and who will be able to view it? Richard deVerdier, president of ICAP, recently sent out a letter to appraisers including a pettition to for them to sign. Take a moment to read his letter and sign the petition.

Fellow appraiser,

 

We always hear from our subscribers that no one is listening and you aren't being heard. Well there is one person who is using his voice to make sure appraiser issues are being talked about. Phil Crawford hosts a weekly radio show, "Voice of Appraisal" designed specifically for appraisers. His no-nonsense approach to issues in the industry creates a cutting edge program that provides insight into the profession that is rarely heard. We were able to get in touch with him and ask him a few questions about the industry as he sees it.

Recently there was a meeting of several representatives of independent state professional appraiser organizations. The meeting in Chicago included members from 16 different states. We caught up with one of the members Charlie Gress, President of the Ohio Coalition of Appraiser Professionals, to ask him a few questions about this meeting.

Buzz: Thank you for speaking with us Charlie, most of our readers have read your articles before but for those that haven't give us a quick bio about your history in the industry.

We need to hear from appraisers! Its time for a new edition of the National Appraiser Survey.  Last year we had almost 2250 appraisers respond to our survey. If you missed the results you can download them for free HERE. Your responses are important to all stakeholders. In order to be heard, you need to make your voice louder. The Appraisal Buzz is the most widely distributed valuation publication. Your opinions matter.

Last month the Virginia Center for Housing Research and the Virginia Tech Program in Real Estate released the Virginia Residential Real Estate Appraiser Remuneration Survey Results. We sat down with Drew Sanderford who was the primary investigator to discuss the survey itself, the results, and what it means to the appraisal industry.

Buzz: Thank you for joining us to discuss your recent findings. Can you tell our readers a little about your experience in the industry?

We sat down with Ed Pinto of the American Enterprise Institute to talk about this upcoming webinar, The Devolution of Appraisal Theory and Process. This will be a three part series. We wanted to discuss it with him and find out why appraisers should attend. Find out what he had to say in this in depth interview.

Buzz: Thank you for taking the time to speak with us about your live webinar on the Devolution of Appraisal Theory and Process. Can you tell our readers a little bit about your history in the industry?

Last year we offered our 2013 Fall AMC directory for free to all of our Appraisal Buzz subscribers. It was the first year it was offered and we received a huge response with over 2,200 downloads of the directory. We know that the response will be even bigger this year for several reasons. Lenders and Appraisers know about it now and have been patiently waiting for the newest update.

One of the biggest complaints we hear from appraisers is about revision requests. We thought it would be a good idea to host a webinar for appraisers so they can better understand the reasoning behind such request and what can be done to avoid them. We've assembled an appraiser, an AMC representative, and a Lender representative to give us their point of view on this process. Our appraiser is Alan Hummel, SRA of Forsythe Appraisals. Our AMC representative is Kevin Lahr with Digital Risk. And finally, Beth Hoffman of Progress Bank is our Lender representative.

There are very few industries quite like the appraisal industry. An appraisal office is predominantly a small business in terms of size and volume that is heavily regulated. We always think of appraisers as individual islands in the valuation space. What if there was a place an appraiser could go to get that precious bit of information that could change their business. Possibly make them more efficient? Allow them to provide their client with a better product? A place where they could learn some of the insider secrets in the industry? But the source would have to be reliable.