The New Appraisal Industry

[George Hatch]

You think there’s some mountaintop with men of high ethics and morals that work as “lenders”? The better the salesman, the higher up you go.

Not at all. It's not about implying the lenders are categorically more honest or more ethical than the sales types. It's about limiting the control and the accountability to the people are actually using the appraisals for their stated usage.

The salesmen use appraisals as advertising for their deals, not to make any lending decisions. They're not making decisions about the employment or the credit history or the income or the LTV. It's not their money that's going out the door or is being represented to the secondary market investors. That's why the salesmen's idea of what a good appraisal is or how good the appraiser is will be limited to whether or not they can make the deal.