NY, FirstAM & WaMu article

[Frederick]

On Tuesday I got an email from EappraiseIT inviting me to work for them.

I feel like sending them a rejection letter that states; I am a CG with 27 years experience, a clean record and a good reputation, why the h..... would I want to be associated with you?

As this scandal has been widely publicized I am sure they have lost a huge number of clients overnight so the need for appraisers to join their panel cannot be based upon appraisal volume. My guess it is a mad scramble to stack their panel with appraisers with credible and significant resumes'.

My exposure to them in the past suggested all they ever cared about was cheap. Their fees were so low that it was obvious they had no concern about hiring a proven and credible professional. Like being offered a new Cadillac for $5,000 you have to know it there is something wrong with the deal.

Clearly the lid is closing on their coffin and this effort is too little too late. How can a large financial institution in this "current business climate" justify using an AMC with a cloud over its head when there many more AMCs that can service them?

Regardless of the outcome of this suit and the associated class actions this company in its present form is toast. With huge losses attributed to the mortgage industry in the headlines anyone with the hint of impropriety relative to collateral valuations is going to find it very hard to find clients.

If I were an AMC I would be very nice to my appraisers these days. You don't want to get that stink on you if you expect to survive this turmoil. A letter to a regulatory body could be the kiss of death.

I think as these mortgage woes dominate the headlines it should open a marketing opportunity for appraisers with credible resumes', significant experience and clean records. With funding sources drying up and attention finally be paid to appraisal quality and fraud reporting systems like Pam's I can imagine we may have more power in the mortgage industry than we have ever had.

This is shaping up to be as, or more, dramatic to the appraisal industry than FFIRREA and licensing was. Appraisal quality is finally something the big boys need to care about.

 

[Carnivore]

This is shaping up to be as, or more, dramatic to the appraisal industry than FFIRREA and licensing was. Appraisal quality is finally something the big boys need to care about.

Frederick,

Interesting that you brought this up. A lender(mortgage banker, NOT A TABLE FUNDER)) assignment last month required my resume to be included in the report. I happily agreed.

So I agree with you 100%. The market place is going to straighten this out.
I have always said that Skippy was selling his services to cheaply. Skippies bad business acumen caused fees to drop to unbearably low points. Skippy was taking good easy work away from you and me. Skippy was too stupid to realize he should have been getting double(or more) the regular market fee at a minimum for his "Make the Number" work.

Appraisers should ask themselves, 'Do I really want a Mortgage Broker as a reference?' My references are from 1. Military Federal Credit union 2. Major Secondary Market Participant 3. Charlotte Law Firm.

From those references I have picked up three new clients. 1. another FCU, 2. a 503C organization and. 3 another much larger law firm.

So look over your resume, Clean it up., take meaningful CE, take more CE then you need each cycle. develope NEW innovative appraisal serivices.

By all means Keep lenders as a part of your client base, but make them compete for your services. This way you can fire the occasional errant jackasse without hurting your business.

 

[john brown]

Signing/Certifying a PDF document with a personal/email digital certificate

triple dittos to that. Now we are making some progress.

Signing/Certifying a PDF document with a personal/email digital certificate:

There are several variations and you can pick the variation that works best for you. It is important that you understand how this works so that you can protect your documents and defend yourself in court.
This example uses Adobe Acrobat Pro to certify that a document has been signed with your digital certificate. Any changes to the document will invalidate the certification of the document.

Annual Setup tasks:
1. Get a Digital Certificate
2. Import the Digital Certificate into the Adobe Acrobat Certificate store or the Windows Operating system Certificate Store (Registry)

Signing/Certifying the PDF: (Daily signing tasks)
3. Review the final PDF document. You cannot make changes to the PDF once you signed it. You will need to create a new PDF document.
4. Follow the PDF menus to sign the document

And thats it.

Signing a document with a digital certificate makes it tamper evident, not tamper proof.

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1. Get a personal Digital Certificate:

A personal Digital Certificate is a bunch of random bytes specific to you. This is used as the key to sign your document. A document is "signed with a certificate" by computing a hash/"magic number" based on the contents of the file and encoded with your private key (digital certificate). If any byte/part of the document is changed, this "magic number" will be invalidated.

You can create your own digital certificate or buy one from a certificate authority (CA), an independent third party, for "free" or for an annual fee of about $20 and a lifespan of a year. The issuance of a personal digital certificate from a CA provides the recipient of your document an assurance that you have signed the document with a valid certificate.

Some of the CA's refer to this type of certificate as an "Email certificate" (same thing)

If you create your own digital certificate, you will need to send the public keys to your recipients, they will need to import the public key, and ... too much headache for what "free" or $20 solves.

Links to CAs and their personal/email Digital Certificates products. Follow their instructions and you should be fine.

Thawte: (Free personal certificate)
http://www.thawte.com/secure-email/...tes/index.html?click=main-nav-products-email#

Comodo: (Free personal certificate)
http://www.instantssl.com/ssl-certificate-products/free-email-certificate.html

Geotrust:
http://www.geotrust.com/products/client_certificates/my_credential.asp

And many more CAs ... you can search yahoo.com

So now you have a personal Digital Certificate lying around in a file on your disk somewhere or you have imported it into your web browser. If you imported the cert into your web browser, instead of saving to a file on disk, follow the instructions from your web browser to export it to a disk file. (You should keep a backup copy of your personal dig.cert.)

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Step 2.

Start Adobe Acrobat Pro/Professional (Standard version does not have this functionality).
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/matrix.html

(I'm using Adobe Acrobat Pro 6)

In the menu bar, click on Advanced, Manage Digital IDs, My Digital ID
Then click on Add, Import Digital ID File, select the cert file containing your personal digital certificate
If it is imported correctly, you will see it listed in the window "Manage Digital IDs"
Click on the Digital ID in the window
Click on settings
- Do not make any changes just yet. Just note the options available here so that you can come back later and fine tune for your needs.

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Step 3 & 4:

3. Review the final PDF document. You cannot make changes to the PDF once you signed it. You will need to create a new PDF document and resign.

4. Follow the PDF menus to sign the document
(Be careful as the instructions here are not the default selections)

- Open the PDF document that you are going to sign
- Click View, Navigation Tabs, Signatures
- You should see the Signatures Pane with nothing there
- Click Document, Digital Signatures, Sign this document, Certify Document
In the "Save as Certified Document" click OK,

For "Allowed Actions", click "Disallow any changes to the document"

In the "Save as Certified Document", select "Do not show Certification on document"

In the Digital ID Selection, select the Digital ID that you imported in step 2.

In the "Save as Certified Document - Sign", Reason for Signing document, select "I am the author of this Document". (There are other options on this screen that I do not use)

Click "Sign and Save As"

And you are done.

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Validate your document.

Using Adobe Pro, Open the document that you signed

In the left corner bottom you should see a Blue Certification Image
Double click on this image and it should tell you about the certification status
Click the signatures Pane and you should see the signing information

Edit any part of the document and save the document

Close the document that you have modified

Open the document again and you should see the "Certification INVALID"

In the left corner bottom you should see a Red X over the image of a pen
Double click on this image and it should tell you about the certification status
Click the signatures Pane and you should see the signing information is invalidated


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As you have gone along you have noted several options, most of which I do not care about.
The Adobe Help has nice instructions about signing and certifying documents. An investment of your time will pay off. There are more feature such making a image of a signature , attaching this image to the document and so forth. I do not need all that extra stuff.


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If you do not have Acrobat Pro, you can download a trial version from Adobe
The nice thing about buying Adobe products directly from Adobe is that you can return them for a full refund. (In case you buy the wrong product). The not so nice thing is that you pay full list price.

Over the years we have bought a number of products without issue from www.buycheapsoftware.com (we have no affiliation or kickback) although you cannot return product if you buy the wrong stuff.
http://www.buycheapsoftware.com/ms_products~subcategory~65.asp

OEM version of adobe acrobat professional will not allow you to upgrade to future versions.
Full Retail CD and manual are just that (CD, license and manual in a plastic wrap).
Full Retail Box version is the box like you would see at Best Buy where you end up throwing out a lot of affiliated marketing stuff.

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[Carnivore]

John brown,

Excellent! With your permission I would like to make a PDF of your post with my Acrobat Pro 7.

udaman!!

Anybody who does not do this would be crazy cnsidering the criminal entities out there that would have no compunction to operate like Eape.

 

[Lloyd Bonafide]

Article on WaMu, eAppraiseit, approved appraiser lists, and exclusionary lists:

http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/

 

[hastalavista]

Article on WaMu, eAppraiseit, approved appraiser lists, and exclusionary lists:

http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/

Lloyd-

Good post.
I wonder if reading this convinces one that bringing AMCs under federal regulatory guidelines is a bad idea; I'd rather being holding a bank (that takes depositor's monies) feet to the fire than some AMC. Much regulatory leverage over a bank; not much over an AMC (you close one down, two more pop-up).

 

[Tom Barclay]

I don't know if it would work, but the only solution I see is to let the banks or mortgage brokers hire whomever they please to do their appraisals. No AMC's as we know them today. Then there would need to be the investors' or secondary market version of the AMC(set up and hired and run by the investors) who would actually oversee the credibility of the appraisal, and the entire process in which it was obtained. After all, it is their money at risk. Not to be confused with the "rating agencies and securities brokerages" to accomplish this. This would still allow sub-prime at higher risk, and those loans couldn't be bundled with less risky loans in a "package". Strict reviews; if the whole process doesn't pass, including the appraisal, out it goes and the lender is stuck with what they produced before it goes on the market. The market would then force the regulation on the originators post haste, not only when the individual bundled package of securities defaults or comes into question. Wouldn't take to long for those non compliant originators to be holding more than their share of the bag. Not sure if this makes sense or not.

 

[john brown]

John brown,
Excellent! With your permission I would like to make a PDF of your post with my Acrobat Pro 7.

Have at it !!

 

[Riick]

On Tuesday I got an email from EappraiseIT inviting me to work for them.

I feel like sending them a rejection letter that states; I am a CG with 27 years experience, a clean record and a good reputation, why the h..... would I want to be associated with you? << snipped >>

A nice Form Letter your Letterhead, stating that they don't meet
your minimum Client Qualifications would be good business, and the
polite thing to do. Who knows, you might want to use them someday. <smile>

Forgetting about their micro fees, why would anyone take the risk of
having them owe you money? Their days are numbered, and I wouldn't want to wait to get $.03 on their $125 fee.

 

[Carnivore]

Time to indemnify yourself from AMC's. Make them sign a letter.

I am going to say this again. Anyone who compltes work for Eape at this time is sitting on a ticking time bomb. Run!!


The Eape clients will go somewhere else to get appraisals. Either direectly or through another AMC. If they do you guys who do this work can collect evidence and send it to Pam. She will see to it that it Gets to Mr Cuomo!!