Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday that Fannie Mae is proposing to ban the use of appraisals by a lender's employees or those arranged by mortgage brokers. The proposal was contained in what Bloomberg referred to as a "talking points" memo distributed to lenders this week and was in response to an...
We explored foreclosure fraud pretty thoroughly several years ago (search the website for " appraisal fraud ") and learned that no one was more upset over the pressure on appraisers to bring in inflated property values than honest appraisers themselves who were blogging on the subject and gathering...
April showers bring May flowers and reports of record home sales and skyrocketing housing prices are invariably the moisture needed to bring new real estate agents sprouting out of the ground. It happens in every boom market and usually ends as thousands of the newly licensed real estate agents tear...
It has been brewing for a while, this latest real estate imbroglio, and, in a real twist, it is the reputed perpetrators who have been screaming the loudest to alert the public to the crime. Appraisers have complained for years, decades in fact, about the pressure they state they sometimes get from real...
Last week we outlined how home appraisers gather and measure the qualities of a house based on its neighborhood, site, and home improvements. Now we will try to explain how they use visual impressions and hard information to determine the market value of a home . As was stated earlier, the appraiser...