Truth or Dare

[djd09]

it is unbelievable that some appraiser is arguing for the unethical stakeholders...

 

[George Hatch]

How is observe/report a form of advocating for them?

The liberal chicks and their chick-adjacents think deplatforming opinions and discussions they don't like is an argument. That's what you are trying to do. It's not an argument. If "using their AVM" is what the GSEs are doing then it is what it is whether we like it or not.

Your problem isn't with what I think. It's with what they are (actually) doing. Or more to the point, with what they did 14 years ago when they cut your clients out of the loop.

 

[djd09]

i simply paste their words...if you think the most biased parties should estimate value...then you should keep trolling me

 

[George Hatch]

I'm not saying the GSEs should do be using their AVM instead of an appraisal for these transactions. All I'm saying is that according to their own explanation that's what they're doing.

Not allowing you to get away with repeating the untruth as if it were true isn't a troll, either. It's a kindness.

 

[Mejappz]

it is unbelievable that some appraiser is arguing for the unethical stakeholders...

Speaking of the unethical stakeholders. But keep following their flawed guidelines and standards.

*** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ***​

SMOLLETT REVERSAL WILL EMBOLDEN MORE HOUSING DISCRIMINATION HOAXERS

VENTURA, Calif. (November 22, 2024) – The Illinois Supreme Court has overturned former “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett's conviction in a purportedly staged hate crime against himself in Chicago. The merits of the case against the actor were not at issue. Instead, the state’s high court ruled the actor’s constitutional rights had been violated in a double-jeopardy prosecution.

The news could serve to embolden others involved in staging bogus hate crimes and hoax discrimination cases. But for those now engaged in, or thinking of engaging in, similar hoaxes, the fine points of the court’s ruling in the Smollett case may be lost.

In 2019, the actor claimed he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack near his apartment after he had walked several blocks to a sandwich shop. The report of the attack triggered a massive search for suspects by Chicago police before investigators announced they believed the attack was a hoax.
If double jeopardy was indeed the case with Smollett, then the state’s high court was right to reverse the conviction.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has been working to allow convicted felons – white-collar criminals, perjurers and others – to become “discrimination testers,” paving the way for similar hoaxes and shakedowns. These individuals would work with HUD-aligned nonprofits to participate in discrimination stings. Last year, HUD engaged in a federal rulemaking in an effort to allow felons to work with HUD’s nonprofit grantees. You can see the rulemaking here.

The push has already had an effect. It has allowed two fraudsters convicted in federal court while working at the Chatham County Housing Authority in North Carolina to continue to hold key positions at a federally funded nonprofit. Central Piedmont Community Action Inc., based in Siler City, assists people in Chatham, Durham, Orange and other counties with services that include a federally funded housing program.

In another case, a former Jacksonville Housing Authority finance executive, Gregory Samuel Williams, was arrested on a charge of fraudulent use of a credit card after an investigation found numerous prepaid cards issued by the Federal Housing Administration had been used at a Publix store and at the upscale Biscottis restaurant in Avondale, south of Jacksonville, Florida. The prepaid cards were supposed to help low-income residents. If convicted of a felony in the misappropriation of funds, he still would not be banned from continuing to receive grant money from HUD.

As many as 1,000 state-licensed real property appraisers are believed to be under yearslong investigation by HUD in hoax discrimination cases. Appraisers are being blamed for simply doing their jobs, which occasionally involves delivering an opinion of value that costs a broker a commission or upsets a borrower.

The hoax allegations have provided a fig leaf for mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increasingly waive appraisals in federally backed mortgage transactions. HUD has intimidated all appraisers, which was the point all along. These unfortunate individuals rendered opinions of real estate value that were not sufficient to make deals pencil and, as a result, drew bogus discrimination complaints and investigations by HUD. The message to appraisers was clear: if they wished to avoid trouble, they should go along with the contract price in a sale or the value required to make a refinance pencil.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in HUD grant funding have been funneled to crony nonprofits and politically aligned law firms, allowing them to continue to harass appraisers through nuisance lawsuits. HUD has been flush with cash from funding from the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Under the Biden administration, HUD signaled to real estate salespeople, lenders, disgruntled borrowers and HUD-affiliated groups to bring them appraisers for dubious bias investigations.

One HUD-aligned nonprofit, the National Fair Housing Alliance, recently launched a billboard and print campaign that falsely accuses home appraisers of basing valuations on the personal characteristics of the homeowner or buyer, rather than on the property. The ad campaign has set the stage for more hoax discrimination complaints. The bogus complaints will only multiply as bloated home prices begin to correct from the current housing inflation, and borrowers caught in lender debt traps go increasingly underwater and are no longer able to refinance.

Shane Lanham, a Maryland appraiser, is taking the fight to a pair of professors at Johns Hopkins University who, along with their lawyer, have caused his name to be tarnished on a national scale for alleged discrimination – only because his opinion of value did not rise to the professors’ expectation of what their home was worth. Lanham is both defending himself from these baseless allegations and prosecuting a defamation case against the professors, one of whom has passed away since filing the complaint. You can contribute to his GoFundMe page here.

In 2014, Jeffrey S. Watson, general counsel for the National Real Estate Investors Association, called the HUD program that funded the “discrimination testers” an extortion scam, and that was before HUD began its push to allow felons to engage in the activity.

The U.S. Supreme Court case that approved of using “testers” back in the late 1960s did so in part because the “testers” were honest, wrote Watson. Those days are gone.

# # #​

Jeremy Bagott is a real estate appraiser and former newspaperman. His most recent book, “The Ichthyologist’s Guide to the Subprime Meltdown,” is a concise almanac that distills the cataclysmic financial crisis of 2007-2008 to its essence. This pithy guide to the upheaval includes essays, chronologies, roundups and key lists, weaving together the stories of the politics-infused Freddie and Fannie; the doomed Wall Street investment banks Lehman and Bear Stearns; the dereliction of duty by the Big Three credit-rating services; the mayhem caused by the shadowy nonbank lenders; and the massive government bailouts. It provides a rapid-fire succession of “ah-hah” moments as it lays out the meltdown, convulsion by convulsion.

 

[George Hatch]

Kind of a stretch to conflate a ruling on a double-jeopardy technicality with encouragement of housing bias hoaxes, but I guess there's a roll of aluminum foil for everyone.

We already have enough problems with the existing unfounded complaints. We don't need to be adding more paranoia to the mix.

 

[djd09]

The hoax allegations have provided a fig leaf for mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increasingly waive appraisals in federally backed mortgage transactions. HUD has intimidated all appraisers, which was the point all along. These unfortunate individuals rendered opinions of real estate value that were not sufficient to make deals pencil and, as a result, drew bogus discrimination complaints and investigations by HUD. The message to appraisers was clear: if they wished to avoid trouble, they should go along with the contract price in a sale or the value required to make a refinance pencil.

appraisers would be better off giving comp checks...

 

[George Hatch]

Isn't the number of complaints at HUD something like 300? Or am I thinking of a different situation?

I wonder what the average number of ROVs are per appraiser every year?