Appraisal Institute's PAREA receives approval from the Appraiser Qualifications Board

[J Grant]

The main reason the trainee/mentorship collapsed was because the AMC's fee split meant a reduction of income to fee appraisers which resulted in there was no longer a viable enough fee to split with a trainee.

All the rest is spin, essentially.

 

[Non Sequitur]

That's curious.

As I clearly stated in a couple of appraisal publications over the years, appraisal firms should be able to exist without interference - just like all other professions. Mine still does well in our area of the state thankfully, but it hasn't been because of an abundance of help from anybody.

It would have been helpful for FNMA and Freddie Mac to support the appraisal firm when rolling out their PDC philosophy. Instead of including the ability of appraisal firms to choose or train their own property data collectors, or perhaps encouraging the trainee model further, a whole new breed of interference by others has been inserted.

Firms can exist, but it's not that simple. Regulations, which BTW appraisers screamed for, only allow regulated lenders to engage individual appraisers NOT firms. Lenders can't allow a firm to assign for them. In the case of AMCs, licensing allows AMCs to fill that role for lenders (how AMC licensing looks now?).

 

[shrubberyvaluation]

Read the forum regularly and then make the case that less training is a good idea.

There are plenty of pointless questions from presumably other appraisers about what to adjust for a certain feature without even knowing that location is a major factor in it. Plenty that ask if they should give value to something, as if they can wave a wand and add value to a property rather than giving an opinion based on market parcipants actions.

 

[Dale Floyd]

Firms can exist, but it's not that simple. Regulations, which BTW appraisers screamed for, only allow regulated lenders to engage individual appraisers NOT firms. Lenders can't allow a firm to assign for them. In the case of AMCs, licensing allows AMCs to fill that role for lenders (how AMC licensing looks now?).

The majority of our clients, including most AMC's, simply move the assignment to the appraiser we have on staff who is able to get the report completed within the quoted ETA we have summitted. Most of the time, we simply send an email after the assignment is awarded to us, and they have no problem moving the assignment to the proper appraiser.

Bear in mind - ALL of my appraisers are approved with every AMC. I personally only deal with litigation and VA stuff these days, but I'm still approved with them all for those times it's necessary.

We do have a couple, that do strange things. They'll send a potential quote for an assignment to all my appraisers in the firm with different terms and fees. Gotta be careful guys, if you are reading this. We see what you are doing.

Naturally, there are others who are not so easy, and we have to deal with them.

 

[BRCJR]

This has been around since 1994 for regulated lenders. I know GSE's are Exempt. But it isn't a philosophy in many cases. It is a law to be followed. Appraisals should not be assigned to a "firm" but to an "individual" they way I read the below.
If an assignment is placed with a "firm" someone within the "firm" is selecting the Appraiser.

Selection of Appraisers or Persons Who Perform Evaluations
An institution’s collateral valuation program should establish criteria to select, evaluate, and monitor the performance of appraisers and persons who perform evaluations. The criteria should ensure that:
•The person selected possesses the requisite education, expertise, and experience to competently complete the assignment.
•The work performed by appraisers and persons providing evaluation services is periodically reviewed by the institution.
•The person selected is capable of rendering an unbiased opinion.
•The person selected is independent and has no direct, indirect, or prospective interest, financial or otherwise, in the property or the transaction.
•The appraiser selected to perform an appraisal holds the appropriate state certification or license at the time of the assignment. Persons who perform evaluations should possess the appropriate appraisal or collateral valuation education, expertise, and experience relevant to the type of property being valued. Such persons may include appraisers, real estate lending professionals, agricultural extension agents, orforesters.17

 

[Dale Floyd]

Everybody who gets a quote opportunity has passed the vetting standards you just quoted, and are competent to complete the assignment. The one with the best quote, WILL get the assignment.

We all get the requests, but only one is awarded. Sometimes we have to tell them by email which one can meet the terms and ETA quoted, and they generally assign accordingly because we are all on their approved list and we all get the same opportunity to bid. If they assign to the wrong one, we tell them and they typically reassign to the other appraiser but that’s their choice not ours.

It’s not rocket science and there are no laws or regulations broken.

 

[BRCJR]

Everybody who gets a quote opportunity has passed the vetting standards you just quoted, and are competent to complete the assignment. The one with the best quote, WILL get the assignment.

We all get the requests, but only one is awarded. Sometimes we have to tell them by email which one can meet the terms and ETA quoted, and they generally assign accordingly because we are all on their approved list and we all get the same opportunity to bid. If they assign to the wrong one, we tell them and they typically reassign to the other appraiser but that’s their choice not ours.

It’s not rocket science and there are no laws or regulations broken.

Sounds like they are assigning/agreeing to an individual not a firm. That was my only point.

Yesteryear, when a "firm" was selected and someone in the firm selected the Appraiser that was not allowed for FRT.

It was very commonplace but still a violation since 1994 if done by "firm" selection.

 

[John Hassler]

I would say that I 100% agree that the adoption of the philosophy that an appraisal had to be assigned to a specific appraiser (rather than sent to a firm who could assign within that firm) played a big part in the demise of the smedium size firm. I have explained this issue to many over the years - in fact we just had an internal discussion about this very thing last week. At my old firm, we adopted to that by replacing such clients with clients who had no such requirements. We sought out local and regional lenders who were typically easier to work with as a firm. It could still be done (I know appraisers locally who still have smedium firms), but it is certainly a challenge.

I also agree that is came with the proliferation of AMCs - but, it was not due to the AMCs themselves; rather, it was driven by the way lenders audited selection of appraisers by AMCs. I saw this when I worked at a large AMC. Lenders would come in with random list of their loans and we would have to go through the logs and show them the logic for how the individual appraiser was selected from among all those eligible for the order. That included showing how many on the panel were in the coverage area, what their service and quality scores were, etc. The lenders simply did not allow assigning to a firm - the AMC had to select an individual appraiser. I spent a lot of time trying to get lenders to change their position but most did not want to change their policies because they knew that most appraisers did not work at firms, and they saw no need to change policies to accommodate firms.

Well , I will say ‘thank you for your efforts’ but knowing that an AMC was inserted into the process meant that mortgage lending was over as a profession. As you stated, you former firm does little/no AMC work.

AMCs are carpetbaggers that add nothing to the process for a professional appraiser. Behind every major AMC is a slick salesperson of a CEO/ owner. And I say this as someone who has issued thousands of dollars of fines to AMCs.

One of my taglines in the 2000s was “AMC: verb, a method of finding the least competent appraiser at the lowest price.” If an AMC did hire a competent appraiser it was only because they couldn’t find someone less competent or cheaper. They are a pox on the profession. That there are so many ‘issues’ with appraisers today is a direct result of AMCs who weeded out the competent and rewarded the incompetent.

Now some may say ‘but it was the lenders wishes’ to which I say AMCs are willing and paid for accomplices.

 

[gregb]

Now some may say ‘but it was the lenders wishes’ to which I say AMCs are willing and paid for accomplices.

Lenders and AMC's acted together enabling the destruction of the appraiser fee shop profession. With the AMC skim of the appraisal fee, it was no longer viable for an appraiser to take on trainees and perform the long-time role of mentorship that had existed for more than 40 years.

 

[J Grant]

Lenders and AMC's acted together enabling the destruction of the appraiser fee shop profession. With the AMC skim of the appraisal fee, it was no longer viable for an appraiser to take on trainees and perform the long-time role of mentorship that had existed for more than 40 years.

The unholy alliance of many lenders with AMC's exists because of the HUD split fee enabling an AMC to suck the profit from the vendor appraiser while charging NOTHING as a hard cost to their lender customer ( as well as that a lender can own the AMC under a different division and thus also be that AMC's customer )

If the AMC cost was 100% borne by the lender, the AMC's imo would not have gained such a large market share and intractable hold on the industry.

It's gone a step further now in that Hybrids MUST be ordered by a lender from a select list of AMC's and only those AMC's . This means an individual fee appraiser can not get a hybrid ordered through a lender client direct sent to them.

If there is a fee now for a WAIVER/value acceptance to the borrower (which there might be since a number of waivers now require a PDC inspection, who keeps that money?