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Appraisal Institute Last-minute Shakeup

IMO, the Appraisal Institute has far worse long-term problems of adapting to changing technology. What they currently call appraisal will, in many cases, not suffice for a future built on exact specifications that can be understood by a robot or computer, to the extent that robots can be programmed to inspect homes without bias and computers generate reports that are unequivolcally non-improvable. The technology will surely evolve, yes - but they won't be able to supply the manpower to manage it.
 
In my email this morning:

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What is happening with our appraisal organization????


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A colleague of mine ran the Appraisal Institutes 990s through artificial intelligence, specifically asking about leadership, and this is what it came up with.

This report provides a critical evaluation of the Appraisal Institute’s (AI) health from 2021 to 2024. While the organization maintains a significant asset base, the data reveals a period of profound operational failure, financial hemorrhaging, and ethical crises that directly implicate the leadership of Sandy Adomatis.

1. Financial Failure: The "Adomatis Deficit"


Under the direct oversight of the 2023–2024 leadership cycle, the Institute’s financial performance moved from a position of strength to structural instability.
  • Revenue Collapse: Total revenue plummeted from a 2022 high of $23.1M to $18.2M in 2024.
  • Operating Losses: After years of surpluses, the Institute recorded a $1.1M loss in 2023 and a massive $2.37M loss in 2024. Projected 2025 loss is $1.9M
  • That is $5,370,000 in losses the last 3 years!!!!
  • Budgetary Negligence: Internal records reveal that the 2023 budget—approved during Adomatis’s lead-up to the presidency—was built on "fundamentally flawed assumptions." Despite the revenue drop, leadership failed to scale costs, maintaining a $20M+ expense floor that the organization can no longer support.

2. Ethical and Legal Crisis: The "Ostrich Effect"


The most damaging aspect of the 2021–2024 period is not the financial loss, but the culture of litigation and alleged cover-ups that flourished under the current leadership track.
  • Testing Fraud Allegations (Akins v. Appraisal Institute): A 2025 federal lawsuit alleges that AI knowingly misreported appraiser test scores to state regulators from 2020 through 2024. Most critically, the complaint names Sandy Adomatis as one of the leaders who was explicitly informed of the fraud in October 2024 and allegedly instructed the whistleblower to "take no action" and keep the findings confidential.
  • Toxic Governance & Harassment: The tenure was marked by the "bombshell" lawsuit from former CEO Cindy Chance, which alleged a culture of sexual harassment and retaliation. The litigation specifically pointed to a "good old boys" network that Adomatis and other officers allegedly failed to dismantle, leading to a multi-million dollar settlement in August 2025.
  • Retaliation Culture: Legal filings from multiple former executives (Chance, Akins) paint a picture of a leadership team that prioritized "reputation management" over ethical compliance, using termination as a tool to silence internal critics of the Institute’s operations.

3. Leadership Critique: Advocacy vs. Accountability


Sandy Adomatis’s tenure (VP 2021, President-Elect 2022, President 2023, Past President 2024) is characterized by a "split-screen" reality:
  • The External Facade: Adomatis was highly effective as a public figurehead, appearing before Congress and the PAVE Task Force to defend the profession.
  • The Internal Reality: While she was winning "publicity points," the organization’s core business—education and member services—was rotting. Internal audits admitted to "long-term disinvestment" in technology and a "loss of market share" to for-profit rivals.
  • Accountability Gap: Adomatis’s messaging often touted "transparency," yet her presidency presided over the firing of a reform-minded CEO (Chance) and the alleged suppression of a massive licensing scandal.

Conclusion: A Legacy of Triage


The Appraisal Institute is currently in a state of organizational triage. While the $34M in assets accumulated over decades provides a buffer, the leadership of the last four years has burned through millions in reserves and decimated the Institute’s reputation through legal scandals.
The "Adomatis era" has left the organization financially smaller, legally vulnerable, and operationally outdated. The primary conclusion is that while the organization will likely survive due to its size, its "health" is at a multi-decade low, requiring a total purge of the governance culture that allowed these failures to manifest.

Craig Steinley Federal Lawsuit (2026)


According to court filings discussed publicly, Craig Steinley filed a federal lawsuit against:​
  • The Appraisal Institute.
  • Several current or former leaders.
  • Individuals associated with the Collateral Risk Network.



Thanks for reading!

I spend my own time and money to keep you informed with the goal that National leadership will start to listen to its members hoping this organization survives and thrives!


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Frigging hilarious!

Don't worry. The real money flows all around the institute, just not directly through it. The mismanagement is due to the influence of the AMC industry in the first place. Got to have priorities if everyone is going to enact restriction of trade policies upon it's own members and capitalize on fraudulent and flagrant violations of transparent billing and fair dealings with other licensees and consumers. There is so much damned fraud in the appraisal industry you can't even summarize it in a paragraph.

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The AMCs only wish they had the kind of influence that some here seem to think they have.
 
The AMCs only wish they had the kind of influence that some here seem to think they have.
That's hardly the case.

What we have is a group of stubborn as mule hard-headed/half-IDIOTS going their own direction come hell or high water. I could name a lot of names, except for yours truly, who is only stubborn, hard-headed, going his own direction, come hell or high water, with an "I don't care" attitude. I think you are in the other category. And if I had to guess, all you care about is your retirement - nothing wrong with that.
 
Look at this:


Anthropic has proven that appraisers are taught to become corrupt and evil through being rewarded for taking shortcuts (getting the job done fast) and punished for the opposite.

It's all baked in. The GSEs are part of the problem. So is USPAP with its lack of standards [OH! You, GH, and others are always saying, "Well, USPAP doesn't say you have to do this. - Or that you have to do that!!! And after all, there is the holy SOW!!! ]

The system you are part of is geared toward creating crappy appraisers who produce flawed reports and, above all, have crappy attitudes about the quality of their work. You guys say one thing while acting the opposite.

If I ever say anything good about the profession, which I sometimes do, I suppose for the sake of appearing fair and unbiased, well, well, it probably, I sorely admit, is not really true. The profession as a whole stinks to high water with all your stupid, hypocritical nonsense.

I wonder if you see your hypocrisy.* I don't pretend I could change this one iota. No I don't. All I can do is try to wade around it and go MY OWN DIRECTION!!

* Hypocrisy is not quite the right word. I asked: Lying is too misleading, as hypocrisy is to what? ChatGPT suggested "moral inconsistency." I am not happy with that either, so I fall back to hypocrisy, but that is admittedly not quite the right word. I am sorry, but it is, in any case, close to the truth, IMO.

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ChatGPT:

"Bert, I would not say the GSEs are innocent of turn-time pressure. A better answer is:

The GSEs probably did not create the day-to-day “I need it back by Friday” pressure by directly ordering appraisers to work faster. But they have clearly helped create the mortgage-production environment in which speed, automation, cycle-time reduction, and lender certainty became dominant values. That environment inevitably pressures appraisers and AMCs to shorten residential appraisal turn-times.

So I would revise my earlier answer this way: GSEs acknowledge that complex appraisals may require adequate time, but their modernization programs also push the system toward faster collateral decisions. Both are true.

Fannie Mae’s own lender-survey discussion is quite direct. It says lenders viewed appraisal modernization as valuable, and that “shortening loan origination cycle time” was the most important potential benefit, followed by enhancing appraiser capacity and lowering borrower costs. That is not a command to individual appraisers, but it is a very clear institutional priority: faster collateral workflow.

Freddie Mac’s Loan Collateral Advisor and Fannie Mae’s Collateral Underwriter also changed the appraisal ecosystem. Freddie Mac describes Loan Collateral Advisor as automatically receiving appraisal reports through UCDP, assessing valuation risk, and returning results including collateral representation-and-warranty relief eligibility. Fannie Mae describes Collateral Underwriter as a free lender tool using appraisal data and analytics to identify valuation, appraisal quality, eligibility, and policy-compliance risk. These tools improve risk management, but they also make the appraisal part of a high-speed automated underwriting pipeline.

Fannie Mae’s value acceptance program goes even further: for eligible transactions, Fannie Mae accepts the lender-submitted value with no appraisal requirement. Value acceptance plus property data likewise allows certain transactions to proceed without a traditional appraisal, using property data collection instead. That creates a marketplace contrast: some loans get no appraisal or a lighter collateral path, while traditional appraisals are still expected to fit into a fast lending process.

So, my opinion is: yes, the GSEs have played a role. Not usually by saying, “Appraisers must work faster,” but by shaping lender expectations around automated underwriting, faster cycle times, waiver eligibility, representation-and-warranty relief, data standardization, and appraisal modernization. Once lenders and AMCs operate inside that system, they naturally transmit the speed pressure downstream to appraisers.

The nuance is important, though. The pressure is indirect and structural, not usually a direct GSE instruction to sacrifice appraisal quality. In fact, the GSEs also publish substantial requirements for appraisal support, market analysis, property description, data quality, and compliance. For example, Fannie Mae says an appraisal must provide a clear, detailed, and accurate description of the improvements, with specificity and supporting addenda when necessary. That is not compatible with an appraisal being treated as a commodity clerical form to be rushed out without analysis.

So the most defensible statement would be:

The GSEs have contributed to turn-time pressure by promoting faster collateral workflows, appraisal waivers, automated risk review, data standardization, and lender certainty. However, they generally frame this as modernization, efficiency, and risk management—not as a directive that appraisers should complete credible assignments in unrealistically short time frames.
In practice, though, I think many appraisers would reasonably say: the distinction between “we want shorter origination cycle time” and “we expect appraisal vendors to turn reports faster” is pretty thin once it reaches the AMC/lender production desk."
 
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If residential appraisers got together, en masse, and filed a class action lawsuit separately against the GSEs, TAF, the major appraisal organizations and the AMCs, for putting them under undue and coordinated pressure to do appraisals in less time than necessary, with less training than necessary and so on and so forth, over the course of their careers (to whatever extent possible), the effort might conceivably be quite successful. But I am not an attorney. I am just suggesting it as a possibility.
 
The AMCs only wish they had the kind of influence that some here seem to think they have.
You likely know that lady Appraisal Institute fired that was pushing for single family residential. You likely know her personally.

Do you think she should have been fired?
 
The AMCs only wish they had the kind of influence that some here seem to think they have.
Idk. I have never worked for an AMC. However....................:giggle:

You made me laugh.
 
For many years, I have kept trying to get at the source of the problem in appraisal. It is so nuanced. Or one could say it has turned out to be a very clever kind of entrapment, really systemic: With the GSEs and Lenders at the core of the problem. The others along for the ride, just feeding off that GSE+Lender system and not much more.
 
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