Covid-19 and Hand Washing: When, Why, and How According to the CDC, hand washing is one of the best ways to protect yourself and your family from getting sick. The following two pages will describe how you should wash your hands to stay healthy. Washing hands is only one aspect of staying safe. Wash Your [...]
Important Articles
Staying safe during appraisal inspection 6 easy steps The appraiser’s work is so important to the financial well-being of America, it can’t be overstated. Many of the site visits that you will be conducting are for home equity loans or refinancing. Many people are using this financing as bridge loans to get them through the [...]
Save this letter in your file; it will help protect you from liability and enhance your professional image. While not typical, there are enough requests for “reliance letters” that they are not uncommon. A mortgage broker may receive a copy of the appraisal report and want to submit it to a “second mortgage” lender, who [...]
The ASB could consider moving forward with a discussion draft or an exposure draft by late 2019. TAF once a draw a bright line between appraisals and evaluations. Background: “Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Board of the Federal Reserve System, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued an advisory to clarify supervisory [...]
What do you know about mold? Where are the alligators lurking, as flood waters abate? Do you think you have third party liability to borrowers? If you think “no”, think again and keep reading, because there are the alligators, along with their attorneys, lurking in the receding floodwaters! What do you need to know about [...]
New gear, yahoo!!!! Who doesn’t want new toys, especially one that can make you better at your profession! Drones, whether you love them or want to shoot them out of the sky, appear to be here to stay. The real estate industry has been quick to dive into this new and innovative technology and appraisers [...]
North Carolina proposes legislation to establish fair “customary and reasonable” fees for appraisers. Prompting FTC (the Federal Trade Commission) to go to bat for the AMCs. While the state North Carolina is trying to ensure that the public receives quality appraisal services and pay fees that are “customary and reasonable” using data from the Veterans [...]
AVMs run on data, your data. Has Freddie or Fannie paid for your data lately? Maybe indirectly. Don’t feed the beast! There are a lot of discussions these days about AVMs displacing appraisers. Is this a tempest in a teapot, a kerfuffle over nothing, or is there a real threat to the appraisal profession? The [...]
Is Freddie Mac planning to eat your lunch or have they already started? Are they planning to stay for dinner? What can we do? Will AVMs displace appraisers? AVMs have been making steady inroads for years, but as they do so, are they meeting their claim of greater accuracy and savings to the consumer? I [...]
A homeowner, Barbara Andersen, who is also a real estate attorney, has filed suit against online realty giant Zillow, claiming the company’s controversial Zestimate tool repeatedly undervalued her house, creating a “tremendous road block” to its sale. Zillow’s Zestimate feature is the cornerstone of its business model. Through it, Zillow attracts millions of home shoppers, [...]