Not an excuse, just an observation. I have spent considerable time over the last few months looking into the motivation behind the market push for alternative products., From what I can tell by my research, the bottom line is that a certain percentage of 1004s are not really credible, and it takes users too much time and money for users to discern which ones are good and which ones are bad. I experience the same thing when i am asked to look at reports. Sure, very basic errors are easy to detect, but really examining a report for a property in an area you are not familiar with takes a lot of time. One could engage another local expert, but that also takes time, and money. For users, it would be far better if reports contained enough imbedded data to allow one to easily see if there was some credible analysis behind the numbers presented.
Just one example - I see many reports, especially in high dollar areas like California, where the land represents 70% or more of the total value, yet the report contains no support for the site value, merely a reference to data in a workfile. Surely the perceived reliability of such reports would be enhanced if the support for the site value was actually included within the report. And, understand that I am not talking about what USPAP or Fannie Mae require - I am talking about value to actual users.
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However, as I said above, the challenge is industry wide, and not specific to any one user or type of user. To me, a better solution is to create a true digital architecture for appraisal reports and to have that architecture include imbedded data and analysis. To me, that would go further to "modernize" the appraisal process than some of the alternatives being explored now.
