Yes technically the LO is our client. I have over 17 years in the busines and have done thousands of reports that are now in closed loans files. Yes we are responsible to the lender.
However, I respectfully disagree. The borrower pays for the report not the lender. RE-fi expample:
I get paid at the door COD.
If an LTV requires the subject to be worth 300k and the report comes in at 250k. It is useless, there is not going to be any loan generated. $725 paid by the borrower for something that cannot be used, will **** off the borrower in return The LO will ask "didnt u check the value before u set up an appointment and did an inspection? Oh no Loyal client of the last 11 years. I was told on the appraisal forum and by Att GEn. CUMO I had to do the report completely oblivious to the value of the property. It had to remain a secret unitl I finished the report or I was vilotating USPAP. If I said anything they would construe my fee was based on a predetermined value.
It's apparent that you consider the MB trade to have been very very good to you.
You've been around long enough and have sat through enough USPAP courses for me to safely assume that you should know better than to consider the borrower to be anything other than the person who provided you access to the property.
The stated use of a mortgage appraisal is to provide the lender with a valuation for mortgage underwriting purposes. And when we refer to "the lender" we are not referring to the former used car salesman who ordered the appraisal and wears the big watch.
Your loan originator client is not the primary user of the appraisal and neither is the borrower. Whatever uses they have for an appraisal are off-label uses that are neither disclosed in the report nor consistent with the stated intended use. So when you make comments about borrowers not being able to use appraisals I have to ask the question - why do you consider that to be a bad thing? Based on your rationale they can't always use the results of a credit report or a title report, either, but they still end up paying for those.
Seriously, you need to step away from the mortgage brokers. They've apparently infected you with their team mentality. The biggest problem with that is that their team consists of them vs. the other intended users of the appraisal. When you join their team and do things you certify you don't do and demonstrate your bias towards the interests of parties you certify you have no bias towards it turns your certification into a lie and it turns you into ....well, you know where that's going. And this occurs whether you dork the value conclusion on the appraisal or not.
If you feel so strongly about playing for the MB team, why don't you disclose that in your appraisal report? Why don't you provide disclosures of the cooperative measures you take in these assignment and your reasons for doing them; i.e., to prevent the borrower from paying for a service they can't "use"?
I'll tell you why - it's because you know that if you were to disclose the truth it would render your report meaningless and unusable for it's stated intended use. You won't disclose what you're doing because - regardless of the verbal acrobatics you're attempting to land here - you know that doing these things is wrong. So in order to cover up the blatant misconduct you are forced to cover it up. Some people would call it lying. In an appraisal report. And then pretending that you're an upright citizen just like every other appraiser.
This is exactly the type of misconduct that the HVCC was ostensibly intended to prevent, and your MB relationships are exactly the type of relationships that it is intended to curtail. The collateral damage that is sweeping through our business is attributable to the abuses resulting from the MB team player mentality that has run rampant through our business for far too long.
One more thing - had the appraiser independence sections in FIRREA stood as originally written back in 1989 you would never have come up in an MB-centric appraisal shop and you wouldn't have learned all these bad habits from the people who trained you.
