I've never been involved with the AI so I don't have a dog in this fight. But it seems to me that the AI should be judged on what it is, not what it isn't or what it could never be.
What do any of you think ANY appraisal org or even all of the appraisal orgs combined could have done to prevent the outsourcing of appraisals to 3rd party contractors specializing in the functions that AMCs perform? Like (5 years ago) when a lender tells an appraiser "if you won't take this assignment for $200 I'll find someone else who will". And you know they mean it because they know that can indeed find someone else who will take that assignment for $200.
Once the mtg brokers got tagged as being the primary source of external influence on appraisers, sufficient to result in gross overvaluations from some of those appraisers, the result was going to end up stripping the control of the appraiser from the loan salesmen, just as had occurred in the commercial side of the business back in 1989.
At that point and in that environment what do you think the AI or (since I know you'll get there) TAF have done to suppress the rise of lenders choosing to outsource appraisals to 3rd party AMCs? What makes you think the appraisers ever had the leverage to dictate terms to their clients and tell them they couldn't outsource to AMCs?
Run me through a couple scenarios to show me the thinking behind your rationale.