HVCC gets bad press from the Wall Street Journal

Appraisers are being squeezed by a drop in fees, due to having to split the fees with the Appraisal Management Companies. Some appraisers are compensating for this by driving longer distances to areas they are unfamiliar with to generate more orders in an effort to create more income. Questions are arising as to whether these appraisers know the neighborhood well enough to be determining an accurate value.

At one point, appraisers were making $300-350 per appraisal (for a single family home) and now, through the AMC’s, they’re making $175-200 after the AMC takes their cut. They’re being asked to work faster, although it doesn’t get the report to us any faster (see blog entry from Tuesday, August 11th). This conflicts with the goal of getting an accurate appraisal.

These appraisers are being asked to travel farther, work in unfamiliar markets, make less money, and this is supposed to be for the better good of the consumer?!!

HR-3044, the HVCC Moratorium Bill, now has 54 sponsors. A recent and less than flattering article in the Wall Street Journal illustrates how the NAR, one of the strongest lobbying groups in Washington, is making a hard push on this issue. Read about it at the following link…..

http://narblog1.realtors.org/mvtype/appraisalinsight/2009/06/interesting_letter_to_the_edit_1.html

The NAR has sent out over 10,000 press releases. Work is being done to get 150,000 signatures on the HVCC petition and when, not if, when that happens, it will be brought to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the office of Andrew Cuomo. If you haven’t already done so, you can sign the HVCC Petition at this link… www.hvccpetition.com. In my haste to get the word out about this petition, I discovered that I hadn’t even signed it yet. I just did and can confirm that there are now 82,538 signatures as of this post.

To contact Rick Masnyk, you can call him at 1-888-282-2835 or e-mail him at rick@getanhonestmortgage.com