The following eBay post for an appraiser apprentice position [Note: PDF] was found on Ann O’Rourke’s Appraisal Today‘s email blast.
Can the standards of the appraisal profession drop any lower? The inference here is that you become a form-filler with minimal effort. Amazing!
Tags: Appraisal Process, Appraisal Management Companies, Soapbox Blog, Mortgage Fraud
Florida’s red-hot real estate market may have a serious downside.
“Research shows that one-third to one-half of appraisals are overpriced, and the problem is endemic in Florida,” says John Taylor, president and chief executive of the Washington, D.C. based National Community Reinvestment Coalition.
“It’s like a time bomb,” says Alan Hummel, government relations chairman for the Appraisal Institute and an appraiser in Des Moines, Iowa. “There is so much out there, but we don’t find out about it until down the road when property owners start having problems.”
Lack of structure and accountability in the valuation process promotes fraud.
When you have a lending system where the appraisal process is not treated as a “sacred activity,” where the results are respected, believed and followed, then money talks and lenders find appraisers who will play the game.
It’s just that simple.
Tags: Soapbox Blog, Mortgage Fraud, FBI
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According to Crain’s New York Business, the city is filing suit against the Census Bureau [Note: Subscription] arguing that the addition of housing units was evidence that the population expanded since 2000, rather than contracted.
Its an interesting argument since the demand for housing has been particularly robust which can not solely be driven by low mortgage rates and changing demographics.
Tags: Commerce Dept, Census
Inflation seen as key to Fed policy.
Tomorrow marks the likely 10th 1/4 point increase in the Federal Funds rate since June 2004 and with the jobs report showing growth, an increase seems almost certain.
The Chinese currency [Yuan] was recently strengthened by 2%, which could reek havoc with the housing market if allowed to float as much as 40% to which would be needed to benefit the manufacturing sector. The US would see a competitive advantage in manufacturing, allowing prices to increase, placing upward pressure on rates, tempering activity in the housing sector.
Tags: China
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According to a WSJ.com article, some sellers are cutting prices on their luxury homes. Since this sector has been the target of new development for several years, it follows that the luxury market would see less of a “froth” than the balance. Unfortunately for developers, the luxury sector sees the highest margins.
Anecdotally, I think that media coverage of high end sales has probably induced sellers to out price the market. In other words, list prices saw greater appreciation than sales prices. I would expect to see an increase in negotiability and an expansion in marketing times in this sector until supply is absorbed.
However, I don’t hold out much hope for that as mortgage rates saw steady gains over the past 6 weeks.
Tags: Bankrate.com
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Public
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Making Sense of Manhattan @ the 92nd Street Y
After the positive feedback received for last year’s panel discussion of the same name, Braddock & Purcell (Kathy Braddock and Paul Purcell) are again hosting the same panel members at the 92nd Street Y this fall.
Last year Paul Purcell asked tough questions of all three panelists: Pamela Liebman, Alan Rogers [former Chairman of Douglas Elliman] and yours truly. I have learned a lot from Pam, Alan and Paul over the years and anticipate that this second edition of the panel will be equally, if not more informative.
Apparently the 92nd Street Y did as well because they booked a larger auditorium!
Tags: Corcoran, 92nd St Y, GSE
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Mortgage financing standards continue to ease in order for lenders to stay competitive. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal the lending risk has been rising along with the rapid escalation in prices.
What is interesting to note, is that standards are easing for investors as well. The NAR reported 23% of all home sales were by investors in March 2005 while First American tracked 9.86% for the first 4 months of 2005. The First American figures are likely to be low because they don’t include second homes. The spread between these two figures suggests that the secondary home market is significant.
Easier access to financing, keeps the churn going. However, the danger is that the combination of leverage and easy access to funds, combined with rapid price escalation, adds potential volatility to the market.
Live by the sword [financing],
Die by the sword [financing].
An article by By Mark Hulbert of MarketWatch titled Can it be a bubble if many recognize it as such? wrote a great article titled “Are bubbles only seen in retrospect?” based on research by
Professor Robert Schiller, the author of Irrational Exuberance which predicted the NASDAQ market correction and his recent book Irrational Exuberance: Second Edition which discusses the housing boom.
Professor Robert Schiller, who I admire greatly for his insight on the housing market and for whom I got to meet in the green room at the taping of CNBC Town Hall: The Real Estate Boom [Note: WM Clip] basically says that we are not protected from a housing bubble simply because people are worried we are in one.
He defines a bubble as “a market situation in which news of price increases spurs investor enthusiasm which spreads by psychological contagion from person to person, bringing in a larger and larger class of investors, who, despite doubts about fundamental value, are drawn to the investment partly through envy of others’ successes and partly through a gambler’s excitement.”
Tags: CNBC, Robert Shiller
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On the Tax and Legal update section on ERC’s web site, there is reference to an IRS memorandum that discusses applying penalties to appraisers who knowingly manipulate appraisals to help an individual pay less tax. Examples of appraisals done for tax purposes include estate tax, gift tax, facade easements and charitable contributions.
the IRS Office of Chief Counsel [note: pdf] discussed the possible application of section 6701 of the Internal Revenue Code to appraisers. Section 6701 imposes a penalty on anyone who aids or participates in the preparation of any return or document and has reason to believe it will result in the understatement of someone else’s tax liability.
What’s wrong with being held accountable for the value estimate? Nothing, except…
…and here’s the caveat, the person requesting the appraisal should be on the hook as well. The tax attorney or accountant is often the person trying to influence the appraiser. My problem with this IRS memo, is that the appraiser is left twisting in the wind.
Tags: Soapbox Blog, Appraisal Pressure, Mortgage Fraud
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Podcasts
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The Real Deal – The Real Deal Weekly Interview
I suggested to Amir Korangy of the Real Deal that he begin Podcasting since his publication would be a perfect candidate for it. The Real Deal has access to many interesting people and their content is always changing.
Not only did he look into this technology right away, but he asked me to be the guninea pig…errr…the first interviewee. 😉
From The Real Deal’s Web Site…
Jonathan Miller at The Real Deal Magazine’s first Podcast on July 15, 2005
In The Real Deal’s inaugural interview in its new weekly audiocast series, we sat down with appraiser Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers and Consultants. Miller’s reports on the Manhattan apartment market are the most widely cited in the industry, and he has been featured in The New York Times, the New York Post and countless other publications including The Real Deal.With reports showing apartment prices hitting new peaks each quarter but often differing significantly in their findings we asked Miller how he collects his data, and his thoughts on the existence of a real estate bubble. To listen to the entire interview, click one of the links below.
excerpt…
THE REAL DEAL: Is there a housing bubble in New York?
MILLER: It’s interesting about the whole bubble psychology the boom and bust orientation in the real estate discussions that have been going on for the last three or four months. Especially because Manhattan is closely tied with the financial markets.
A lot of us remember what happened in ’87 with the stock market crash and subsequent real estate correction that we saw from about the end of ’89 to early ’95. So it is something that is fresh in everybody’s minds, and everybody is trying to relate that to the current experience that we are having now.
When I look at what happened then versus now, it’s apples and oranges, a very different experience. Back then we had a tax incentive-based supply-creation syndrome I made that up, but the idea is that housing came on in large quantities in the mid ’80s because of tax incentives. The 421a abatements gave the incentives to developers to throw foundations in the ground without even plans for what they were going to build just to get the tax credits.
Then all of a sudden in ’86 we had the change in the federal tax laws that eliminated the whole incentive for investors to buy individual units that created a lot of supply. And then we had the co-op conversion frenzy, in which seemingly every rental building that could have been converted was converted. I think the conversion pace today not including 2005, but up through the end of 2004 is something like 10 percent of what it was back then, but that’s largely inclusive of, say, lofts being gut renovated to condo as opposed to existing rental buildings.
As far as today, the situation is we have record low mortgage rates, which are really fueling a lot of the demand and we have an improving but very tepid economy. And we now have supply that is gaining momentum. Your magazine did a great study on the condo inventory that is coming online [in July 2005 issue].
TRD: Thank you.
MILLER: And it’s gaining speed. But it’s still about 3,000 units, give or take, and we have a condo universe of somewhere in the neighborhood of 65,000 to 85,000, depending on who you talk to. So it’s still relatively small. In prior years we were talking about 1,500 units coming online. So the pace is increasing but it’s another 1,500 units a year.
I think the two variables on whether we are going to go into a bubble real estate environment is going to be supply or mortgage rates. There are a lot of other things to look at, but those are two main things. Mortgage rates have been forecasted to increase since the end of 2003, and, generally speaking, they’ve been falling. So, in the equation of supply and demand, it has become a constant.
TRD: Brooklyn has become such a great place for developers to go to because there are so many available lots.
MILLER: For those new developments to come in and be viable they are getting $700 a foot. In Manhattan now, the threshold seems to be you have to be at least at 1,000, and more likely on the new developments you’re talking $1,500.
TRD: If you saw a new development at $1,000 per square foot, would you jump on that and say, “Hey, that’s a bargain?”
MILLER: I guess it’s personal preference. You have to decide whether you like the neighborhood. I’ve always felt the reason why [a neighborhood is] cheaper than a Soho and Tribeca is because it’s not proven as yet for that price structure. So you are going to see more price volatility if you have some sort of market downturn meaning that there is a lot of upside and there’s potential downside.
However, the thing about housing which is very different than stocks, is that, for example, the FDIC defines a housing boom as three years and 30 percent appreciation, and a bust is five years and 15 percent depreciation.
TRD: And how does that compare to our market now?
MILLER: On the upside, we’re about double what their boom figure is. But it’s sort of that idea that on a down cycle, prices tend to be sticky on the downside, that it’s still an asset that’s useable. Real estate is a cyclical thing.
We’ve just seen a lot of the upside over the last five to seven years.
Tags: Amir Korangy, Podcast, FDIC
A few years ago, I decided to be more outspoken about the predicament that appraisers are in. We really don’t have a collective voice over the issue of the flawed structure that currently exists in our profession. It is essentially this:
Bob Moon of the Marketplace show on American Public Media radio showed great interest in the story. He researched and put together a broadcast aired on National Public Radio on June 23, 2005.
At about 6 minutes, it was one of the longest stories they had done in the past year. That meant either I was a fascinating interviewee or the story was compelling. (I assume the latter but was secretly hoping it was the former).
American Public Media “Market Place” Radio Broadcast Appraising the appraisers
UPDATE This was my first post on Matrix. The earlier posts were part of my original Soapbox Blog that I began in early July 18, 2005 and eventually merged into Matrix.
The Marketplace audio file link is broken so I don’t hope they mind me placing the audio file of the June 23, 2005 segment on my blog. This was the moment I came out on the situation appraisers were facing in public. If you’ve been following our industry or are part of it, the solutions set by Dodd-Frank have made the reliability of an appraisal done for a bank even worse.
Tags: NPR, Bob Moon, American Public Media, Radio
The Illinois Coalition of Appraisal Professionals commissioned a study on identity theft and resulting article that has been widely posted on the internet on appraisal sites. Here is a copy [note: pdf]. The letter written by Brian Weaver, a practicing appraiser for over 25 years and worked as an investigator for the Office of Banks and Real Estate in Illinois. He is referring to a problem that is manifested by the state agencies that publish the license numbers of appraisers on the Internet and the appearance of license numbers on all appraisal reports.
This is an excerpt of a letter written by Chip Wagner, IFA, SCRP, ERC’s 2005 Appraisal Foundation Advisory Council Representative to the Worldwide Employee Relocation Council to bring attention to the RAC membership an issue that is affecting the Appraisal Community.
There is an alarming trend of the fraudulent use of appraiser’s license numbers and unscrupulous individuals stealing the name and license or certification number to use on fraudulent appraisal reports. As you can see from the [Brian Weaver] article, over $40 Million in forgery has been uncovered in Illinois, and it is expected that this might be only the tip of the iceberg.
Online appraisal directories, Department of State Web Sites, Appraisal Reports and printed appraiser directories all publish our license numbers. There is no need to disseminate this to the public. Posting categories would replace the need to post numbers since [honest] users of these directories only look to see the license number and often don’t know the classification.
When Chip brought this matter to my attention, my first reaction was “well the Department of State publishes our numbers online for all to see, and most states do the same thing.”
Chip’s response was:
Let me advise you, this is all changing based on the publicity that what is happening in my state is taking place. My state has access to this information password protected now. When I first saw this article on appraiser identity theft, I told my state appraisal board the same thing “this is available on the Appraisal SubCommittee’s website.”
I have been told by my state appraisal director and appraisers on the board that this will be changing because of what is happening in my state.
After thinking about this further, I realized this is a natural extension of identity theft from stolen credit cards and social security numbers. Today, the proliferation of Appraisal Management Companies have virtually eliminated the one on one relationships lenders had with their approved appraisers, in fact 10 years ago, a lender could tell when your signature was forged. Now its a non-issue, they have no idea what your signature looks like.
The first thing to do is remove your license numbers from your own web sites…
Tags: Appraisal Management Companies, Soapbox Blog, Identity Theft
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Jonathan Miller is President and CEO of Miller Samuel Inc., a real estate appraisal and consulting firm he co-founded in 1986. He is a state-certified real estate appraiser in New York and Connecticut, performing court testimony as an expert witness in various local, state, and federal courts. He holds the Counselors of Real Estate (CRE) designation, is an Appraiser “A” Member of the Real Estate Board of New York, and is a member of RAC.
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