The appraiser is the eyes for the lender.
Okay, so we go to the house and know the owner, and we know he served time in jail and was convicted on felony charges but has since been released. To make matters worse, he is on the sex offenders list and we saw him just the other evening (late afternoon) hanging out in a park where there were children. He could very well be going to jail again, and soon, though he isn't accused of anything yet. Do we report his activities to the lender? Are we the eyes and ears of the bank like the SS, or just for matters of real property appraising?
Funny thing is, the lender is really the owner of the house. Typically they have a greater equity position than the occupant. I think reporting to the entity that will have the largest equity position the fact that their investment could be seized by the government is a rather relevant fact that they would like to know before lending. I certainly would like to know if it was my money on the line.
If the lender was the REAL owner of the house then the $150,000 I am upside down on in my house would not be my loss at all, but entirely theirs. Technically, no one owns the house, we own the rights to the house, and when we take out a loan with a bank the rights we own are encumbered by the mortgage. But the lender does not take ownership of anything unless ownership is written into the agreement.
Nobody is going to seize a home for personal picture, decorations, or sloppiness. However, the potential for seizure exists regarding the matter at hand.
Houses can be seized for a variety of reasons. A couple lost their house here due to swinger parties; another house was lost due to regular poker games that alledgedly rose to the level of a casino; US Agents can now seize a laptop computer at US borders at will, hold it indefinately, search its contents, and perhaps seize your house and other assets due to what it contains. As I referred to in another post, just recently a grandmother's house was seized because her grandson, who lived at her house, was caught selling drugs at a street corner; there was no evidence that he ever brought drugs into her house, and she was totally unaware of his illegal activity. Another couple, who owned two houses, and lived in one while renting the other had the house they were living in seized along with their rental, and every other asset they owned, because their tenants planted pot in a wooded area of the rented house and were busted by the Feds.
It simply isn't my position, Dave, to report on how many decks of cards are in a house, or perhaps on an obvious sex room for sex parties at a nudist's house who lives on a lake and has huge, sexfilled weekend bashes (I am speaking from experience on an inspection I did once), or that there are teenagers in the house who reek of marijuana (which has also happened on several occassions), or that the owner has several laptop computers and frequently travels abroad. For all I know, a grow room could actually be filled with Japaneese maple saplings. I am not a botanist, plants are not my speciality. If the room has mold growing on the walls or a mildew odor, I will report that, but I simply don't care what type of plants are growing in pots. Even if the owner told me what they were, I wouldn't report it because I would be reporting on a legal issue to which Iam not qualified, and anything I put in writing concerning it would be considered heresay and possibly libel. If you don't believe me, imagine the extreme: The guys says it's pot, I put the pot grow room in the report, the guy gets wind of it that he is being denied a loan over it, he calls the lender in and invites them to examine the room. It turns out he swiched the plants and now they are all Japaneese maples. Whoops. In comes a botanist who identifies them as just baby saplings. The lender makes the loan, and the owner accuses the appraiser with libel. The appraiser? Guilty as charged.
