Ok, so I’m kidding. But read further.
In my previous post, I address the swirl of interest in the appraisal part of the home sale process brought about by NAR’s Existing Home Sale press release yesterday where they blame appraisers for preventing the housing recovery.
On the same day, the National Association of Home Builders issue a press release specifically addressing the need for new appraisal guidelines. Betting money says the two organizations (NAHB & NAR) coordinated release to get more bang for the press buck, so to speak.
Did you ever think something was terribly wrong, but you didn’t understand why? If you haven’t, then you should definitely read NAHB’s press release.
I’ll lay it out here commenting on each paragraph. It you find it to be too much (most sane people), skip to the conclusion at the bottom.
Using foreclosed and distressed sales as comparables with appraisals on single-family homes without adequately reflecting the differences in the condition of the respective properties is needlessly driving down home values, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).
If foreclosures are competing with the open market sales in the neighborhood – guess what? That’s the market at that point in time. I strongly agree with their point that appraisers need to confirm condition of foreclosure sales if they use them as comps. It’s not that hard. AN APPRAISER SHOULD NEVER USE A COMP UNLESS THEY KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Otherwise, it can’t be comparable, by definition. Of course, the caliber of appraisers performing mortgage lending appraisals is falling rapidly with the proliferation of AMCs. That’s the real issue here.
“Any home buyer can recognize the difference between a well-kept home and a distressed property that is damaged or not properly maintained. So it only makes sense that an appraiser should be required to consider the overall condition of a property and the specific factors related to a foreclosure or distressed property sale when selecting and adjusting the value of comparables,” said NAHB Chairman Joe Robson, a home builder from Tulsa, Okla.
We already are required to verify the sales to be able to make adjustments but the Cuomo/Fannie Mae deal called Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC) has enable a whole army of inexperienced or incompetent appraisers at the expense of competent experienced appraisers who can’t afford to work for half price and turn around assignments in 20% of the time without verifying the data.
I was told by a senior risk officer at a national lender that the bank uses several hundred appraisers in Manhattan. There are less than a half dozen long-time Manhattan-based firms here (with more than 1 employee). Where do all these companies come from? Out of state and up state New York. These appraisers will drive 3-4 hours to come to bang out a dozen reports in a day working for half the market rate.
Appraisers are often only required to conduct exterior inspections of properties that are being used as comparables because they are normally unable to enter these homes and examine their interiors. Too often, properties that have been subject to foreclosure or distressed sales have issues related to deferred maintenance or internal damage that an external inspection simply cannot reveal.
Think about what NAHB is saying here in the first sentence. We are not required to inspect the interior of the comps nor can we be made to. Do we have the right to go in all the comps? Simply walk up to the house across the street and say: “I am doing an appraisal of that house over there and the bank requires me to go inside your house and see what you have.” Good grief. A very poorly worded press release.
The actual point they are making here is that they want the appraisers to consider the condition of the houses being sold at foreclosure and adjust for their inferior condition. NAHB is absolutely correct.
However, the alternative bigger picture, between the lines, inference being delivered in the release is: ALL foreclosure sales are INFERIOR in condition to the house being appraised – that’s why they sell for less. That’s simply not true. Are they more likely to be inferior in condition than houses sold that are not foreclosures? Yes. The seller of a foreclosure is often a large institution not as close to the property as an owner occupant would be and may have a different objective/time frame than a typical seller might.
“While most appraisers do a fine job, there needs to be proper regulatory guidelines for those who use distressed or foreclosed properties as comparables when determining home values,” said Robson. “It is essential that appraisers have the proper experience and guidance to accurately assess values in distressed markets.”
You can’t mandate what comps to use, if they are “comps.” I don’t want the FDIC mandating what wattage of light bulbs I can use in my upstairs hallway either. However, I agree completely with the second point. NOTHING has changed to improve the quality of appraisals since the financial meltdown began. HVCC was intended to remove the high bias in valuation caused by the mortgage brokerage industry’s 60%+ market share of origination controlling and ordering the appraisals. That was removed with HVCC. The growth in mortgage broker market share of bringing business to the banks allowed lender relations with local appraisers and the existence of inhouse appraisal review departments to whither and die. The bank solution appears to be to use AMCs to order appraisals, a process which was enabled by HVCC, which is an accident waiting to happen. While mortgage broker ordered appraisals were biased high, AMC ordered appraisals are biased low.
What about a neutral middle ground? Good grief.
In neighborhoods where comps include a large number of short sales or foreclosures, appraisers should have the option of expanding the geographic area or extending the time frame for eligible sales to get a more representative basket of the value of homes sold in the area, Robson added.
They basically want appraisers to ignore all foreclosure sales because they are “low” and be allowed to expand search guidelines to find higher sales. Property values in a neighborhood that are hurt by rising foreclosure activity isn’t caused by appraisers. They are competition to the non-foreclosure homes (and should be properly adjusted for condition). If the appraiser is determining market value of a property, he/she can’t cherry-pick the high sales. Their logic is a fall-back to credit boom reasoning which was all about finding the highest sales to make the deal happen.
Currently, improper or insufficient adjustments to the comparable values of foreclosed and/or distressed homes often results in the undervaluation of new sales transactions.
The best message in this release and it is absolutely true. Condition of the comps should be discovered and adjusted for. Otherwise they aren’t comps – they are merely sales.
“This practice must be corrected because it contributes to the continuing downward spiral in home prices, forestalling the economic recovery,” said Robson.
Overstated but not entirely incorrect, due to the growing AMC issue. The legion of incompetent appraisers being enabled through HVCC and AMCs are resulting in less accurate valuations. This problem sticks like a sore thumb in a declining market with low sales activity, compromising the public trust.
Conclusion
Foreclosure comps are like the new breed of appraisal management appraisers proliferating in a down market.
* The quality of appraisals should be much higher than it currently is, whether or not the housing market is rising falling or flat.
* Nothing has been done to address the poor quality of appraisals performed for lending institutions.
* National retail banks have all gone the AMC route to get their appraisers.
If the user of an appraisal report (bank, Fannie/Freddie, secondary market investor) doesn’t care about the quality and reliability of the valuation process, then the use of AMCs are enabled and becomes the new market for appraisal services, damaging the livelihoods of competent and diligent appraisers.
The use of AMC appraisers is beginning to sound a lot like the way foreclosure comps are being used in an appraisal.
Tags: Appraisal Management Companies, HVCC, FDIC, NAHB, AMC
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