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Virgina REAB and Portal Petition

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Geroge

The much larger issues is communication. If I understand your postion:

1. You would find it acceptable if a client requires you to send your report through a designated portal so they can do a QC function. I may or may not - that would probably be a matter of negotiation. From a USPAP perspective that doesn't appear to be a problem.


2. You would find unacceptable in if the converter that you must use; deletes pages, changes the order , mixes stuff from one page to another and then requires you to send it in via a portal. If the converter was unreliable and inconsistent about what it was moving around and deleting I'd find that unacceptable. It would be even more unacceptable if the converter moved a "declining market" rating to a "stable market" rating or made other edits to my analyses to change the substantiaitve content of my reports.

OTOH, If I could recognize and then work within the limitations of the converter AND provide a workproduct that would meet the needs of my intended users without causing a USPAP compliance problem then that would be acceptable for me. Others may decide differently, but that still appears to me to be a business decision rather than an appraisal standards decision.



So far so good?

a. As long as you could fix the conversion to be presented properly within the conversion final report before sending it.

or not acceptable

b. you are not able to fix the conversion either from within or prior to the conversion so that it appears as you want.

If the limitations of the conversion are so significant that I can't use it to communicate my appraisal then I can always choose to use a different mode of communication. There are some assignments that really don't fit well on any type of form - that doesn't seem to stop appraisers from working around those limitations and using them anyway. Most appraisers can work within virtually all known limitations if they really want to. I've been doing that since I first started; I see no difference in doing it again to accomodate yet another set of limitations.

What concerns me (a little) are the unknowns, but there are unknowns with most reporting formats. I have no assurance that the kid with the color copier isn't altering my printed reports; that lack of confidence doesn't stop me from using that mode of communication if my client requests hard copies.


If this is what your saying then the problem is "b." You can not fix the conversion within or outside the process.

I wouldn't attempt to fix the limitations in FNCs templates any more than I'd try to fix the limitations in the Wintotal formats. I can complain to them about those limitations but whether they do or don't get fixed is a decision that they will make. My decision comes down to deciding whether I can TCOB within those limitations; and if not, to identify my alternatives. Obviously, I've found it easier to accept and work around the limitations I know about than to jump between 4 different appraisalware solutions trying to find the perfect tool for the assignment at hand, but again that's a business decision, not an appraisal standards decision.
 
woodyva said:
That is the problem guys, we are allowing a company uninterested in manintaining the importance of what we do, and how we do it to tell the clients that what they do inhances the appraisal. It does not, it breaks us down into something that will stigmatize and piegon hole us. The clients are led to believe that by dumbing down our reports into these compartmentalized data reports.

I have taken several classes with various USPAP experts, and from what I have learned from within these academic settings is that sometimes the things clients ask for are not good for the appraisal process. I think many of us misunderstand that if a client asks for something they are entitled to it. That is not the case, ever. If what they ask for undermines what we are doing then it is our obligation to deny it.
Click to expand...
If the clients chose to believe the sales pitch, that is their choice to make. USPAP and appraisal boards don't regulate appraisal clients.

Correct. It is the individual appraiser that has an obligation to determine if a client request is inappropriate for a given assignment. AI Ready may well be inappropriate for a given assignment, but it is ridiculous to try and claim it is inappropriate for all assignments.
 
Some things that happen via eAppraiseIT and BoA appraisal report deliveries:

Quoted directly from document I and others have:

"* Note: AI-Ready will re-format the data sent and create a new PDF for delivery to the client. During this process the overall look and formatting of some fields will be changed.
* Note: An image of your signature will be included in data transmission to FNC. FNC reattaches the signature image to the data when creating the AI-Ready PDF to be delivered to the client."

There's more, but I cannot copy and paste, so I'm not going to bother typing it all out.

There are numerous lines stating a certain page or form field "does not have a corresponding AI-Ready field and will be transmitted in an Addendum."

eAppraiseIT and BoA appraisal report deliveries are far from the only ones doing this.

A nice big sarcastic 'thank you' to those that developed this mess and helped implement it. A special thank you goes to those AI members and TAF / ASC Board and Advisory Council members that have been and/or are involved. www.tavma.com give a pretty good list of them.

How about some Federal subpoenas for what was actually delivered to the lenders through these companies so they can be compared to what the appraiser sent - or thought they sent - or still has an available copy of that they thought they sent. Not just now, but last year - and the year before that - and the year before that.

WHAT PDF document has an "image of your signature" been placed on that I have never seen and have no clue what is on it?

Oh my, my. They ARE delivering a PDF after all. Is it securely locked with the image of your signature prior to delivery to the lender? What happened to the lock you put on the document? Is there a new lock on it?

Lots and lots of questions yet to be answered.
 
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Nothing like an eApe bomb to disrupt the flow of the discussion.
 
That is the problem guys, we are allowing a company uninterested in manintaining the importance of what we do, and how we do it to tell the clients that what they do inhances the appraisal. It does not, it breaks us down into something that will stigmatize and piegon hole us. The clients are led to believe that by dumbing down our reports into these compartmentalized data reports.

I have taken several classes with various USPAP experts, and from what I have learned from within these academic settings is that sometimes the things clients ask for are not good for the appraisal process. I think many of us misunderstand that if a client asks for something they are entitled to it. That is not the case, ever. If what they ask for undermines what we are doing then it is our obligation to deny it.
Click to expand...

I'm seeing two themes here:

One, you seem to be saying that the limitations in these other formats and other user-requests may undermine the level of detail that an appraiser can include in their reports; and,

Two, that the business of appraising suffers as a result of these types of requests from clients and users of appraisals.


The first theme involves an appraisal standards issue of not allowing assignment conditions to undermine the SOW to the degree that the results are no longer credible. In effect, you seem to be concerned that these portal templates are so limited that a report that fits into one may not be credible because the information that couldn't be stuffed into the template by the appraiser is so important that it's omission makes the report inadequate for its intended use.

You'd have to show me what types of information was both so unwieldy as to not fit into those templates AND so critical that their omission made the appraisal report unusable for its intended use. Before you make that attempt, bear in mind that the credibility of a workproduct is always measured within the context of the intended use, and assignment conditions are an element of the SOW decision.

As for the continuous erosions of the business of appraising, what can I say? That's a function of the market conditions and (IMO) is most appropriately addressed within that context, not cloaked in the mantle of appraisal standards.

The ends cannot justify the means because all that will happen is that the real problem (datamining) will return once these guys work their way past the stopgap barriers you're putting in front of them. All that will be left will be the collateral damage from the unintended consequences of trying to make distinctions between electronic files and reports.

Let's say that FNC developed env. formats that would exactly reproduce your reports as they appear in Wintotal. The symptom (rearranging) that you've been complaining about would be resolved but your real problem (datamining) would remain. You'll be right back where you started, and in short order.
 
Trust me, I had no illusion this is just about FNC. This is about data, the control of it, and the value of both. Many, many entities have their hands in the pie. There are many agendas at play here.
 
Here's a rhetorical question: If a client receives my appraisal report as a pdf file and they print it out on letter paper (which would not look EXACTLY like the report in my workfile) do you suppose my state appraisal board would hold me accountable for that? What if they printed it on green paper using red ink?
 
This has never been about data mining, but the USPAP troubles of the conversion, and to my opinion, what may have been allowed to be done on the other end.
 
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