I remember a time in the world, pre HVCC, when I would drive around to mortgage offices. I would stop in, introduce myself to every loan officer and staff member, hand out my business cards, and ask them to give me a try. I would repeat this pattern every week after that until they decided to give me a try. That was then and this is now...
Over the past few weeks, we've released a couple examples from our book "Real Estate Appraisal Practice: A Collection of Examples" (www.appraisalpracticebook.com) which showcases examples of real world quantitative solutions to unique and common appraisal problems. In the first two postings, we showed both a cost- and a rent-based method for supporting an office finish adjustment for industrial properties in a sales comparison approach.
It is with a good deal of lament that I am writing this post. I opened my email this morning to see an announcement from Appraisal Advisor (AA) stating that they that would be ceasing operation as of February 1, 2014. For those that did not know about them, they were, to my knowledge, the only source for appraisers to post reviews about working with Appraisal Management Companies (AMCs). AA also developed credit ratings based on appraiser reviews of working with each rated AMC.
Post No. 37 – Back in November, I posted my letter to the North Carolina Chapter of The Appraisal Institute asking them to work on getting a law passed to allow their appraisers to perform non-USPAP Evaluations. As a follow up, I was able to obtain a letter from the North Carolina Appraisal Board to an out-of-state Evaluator. The main excerpt is as follows:
Competition, in a free market, is a fierce catalyst: one that can effectively sort out the bad apples from the bunch. Capitalism works, it is simple when left unfettered and when all parties are ethical in their approach to business. It works until politicians, however well meaning they try to be, step in with a”solution”. Through the Dodd-Frank reform and the Andrew Cuomo created Home Valuation Code of Conduct that predates Dodd-Frank, congress effectively went anti-small business again.
As I talk with appraisers across the country, I’ve heard there is a slow-down in some areas now (although others report they are as busy as ever). We can choose to think negatively about a slow time, or we can see the slow time as an opportunity to market, market, market.
In today’s, post mortgage apocalypse, market one would assume that the most important part of an appraisal is the accuracy of the estimate of value. By virtue of the data being utilized, its uniformity in how it is presented, the crackdown on form-filling number pushing appraisers, and all the tools we have at our disposal, estimates of value should be more and more accurate every day.
Post No. 36 – Welcome to (a frigid) 2014. Hopefully, everyone had a great Holiday Season.
I am starting off this year with an easy post for myself - basically, a reprint of a press announcement by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Joan Trice and myself are part of this new Center that has been launched.
My personal hope is that the indices provided will be useful in letting us know when prices have disconnected from value. Please visit HousingRisk.Org and make it a Favorite.
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I get it, appraising, especially residential-mortgage-use appraising, can be a thankless job. If you understand all that goes into properly developed reporting, it is hard to compete with the appraisers that perform poor due diligence and in turn, charge much less than the rest of us. They are great at checking boxes and making minimal commentary. They are rewarded for cutting corners, and appraisers that do the quality work are left at the margins. The new Fannie Mae Lender Letter may be a step in changing this.
I normally get very few revision requests, and usually for minor items. I’m not saying this to pat myself on the back, but to explain how surprised I was a few weeks ago when I received two revision requests in the same week. And they weren’t just any type of revision request: they were the dreaded “instruction” from an underwriter.
“Appraiser to include a second sale whose unadjusted sale price supports the opinion of value, and resubmit report.”
