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News By Edition
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Valuation Review Edition
July 21, 2014
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How to ensure everyday compliance in appraising
Posted Date: Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Sometimes it’s the little things that add up to make a big difference in the quality of an appraisal report.
That was the message that Joshua Walitt had for attendees to his “Everyday Compliance Items in Your Appraisal Business” presentation at Valuation Expo in Las Vegas. Walitt is a certified residential appraiser who works for the Colorado-based firm Brownlee Appraisal Services.
Everything from increasing fees, adding clients, ensuring compliance and boosting efficiency can be aided by doubling down on the basics.
The problem is that appraisers often forget or overlook some of the simple guidelines that steer the profession.
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Appraisal Institute backs green-homes study, offers guidance for appraisers
Posted Date: Wednesday, July 9, 2014
The Appraisal Institute, the nation’s largest professional association of real estate appraisers, announced its support July 8 for a U.S. Green Building Council report that found green-labeled homes can sell at higher prices. The Appraisal Institute’s president also provided guidance for appraisers on the use of such findings within appraisal reports. Keep reading for the details.
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Valuation fraud is increasing, according to new report
Posted Date: Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Even in an age when compliance requirements and the scrutiny of appraisal reports are at an all-time high, valuation fraud is escalating.
Interthinx, a subsidiary of First American Financial Corp. and a provider of risk mitigation solutions for the financial services industry, has released its Mortgage Fraud Risk Report for the first quarter of 2014. According to the report, property valuation fraud has increased notably throughout the country both over the last year and since the fourth quarter of 2013, even as other types of fraud have dropped.
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Technology provider names new president and COO
Posted Date: Wednesday, July 2, 2014
FormFree Holdings Corp., a technology provider that specializes in helping financial institutions determine the ability of their customers to pay back loans and reduce closing times, announced June 30 that the company has appointed a new president and chief operations officer. The new hire, who has more than 25 years of senior leadership experience in the consumer goods and technology industries, will be responsible for overseeing the growth of the company and AccountChek, FormFree's proprietary flagship product that verifies a borrower's ability to pay back loans. Keep reading to see which former Coca-Cola executive will be taking over at FormFree.
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The Appraisal Institute recognizes two for ‘Volunteer of Distinction’ in July
Posted Date: Tuesday, July 15, 2014
The Appraisal Institute announced July 9 the recognition of two individuals as a “Volunteer of Distinction” for July. The Appraisal Institute’s recognition program honors volunteers for their service to the Appraisal Institute, to the real estate valuation profession and to their local communities. Keep reading to see the two members that the Appraisal Institute recognized.
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Home prices continue climbing, report shows
Posted Date: Tuesday, July 8, 2014
CoreLogic, a global property information, analytics and data-enabled services provider, has released its May CoreLogic Home Price Index report. According to the HPI, home prices nationwide, including distressed sales, increased in May compared to May 2013. This change represents 27 months of consecutive year-over-year increases in home prices nationally. On a month-over-month basis, home prices nationwide, including distressed sales, also increased slightly in May compared to April. Continue reading to see the full details of the report.
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New York court has last word in condo appraisal battle
Posted Date: Tuesday, July 15, 2014
A New York appellate court has had the last word in a dispute over the accuracy of a tax assessment on a condominium complex. A more than $1 million divide between the appraisals of the condominium’s board and the town’s tax assessor resulted in a court volley that examined the different appraisal calculation methods used by both parties.
The case is Board of Managers of French Oaks Condominium v. Town of Amherst, et al., (Court of Appeals of New York, No. 66).
A complaint was filed by the board of managers of the French Oaks Condominium, a 39-unit residential complex built in Amherst, N.Y., in 2005. For the 2009-2010 tax year, the town of Amherst assessed the property at nearly $5.2 million.
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Pennsylvania plaintiffs allege appraiser incompetence after ‘mental breakdown’
Posted Date: Wednesday, July 9, 2014
A federal district judge in Pennsylvania recently tossed out a lawsuit in which Philadelphia homeowners argued an appraisal on their home following damage from a fire should be set aside because their appraiser “suffered some form of mental breakdown which rendered him incompetent to adequately advocate on their behalf.”
The case is John Mitchell, et al., v. Safeco Insurance Co. of Illinois.
The facts of the case date back to December 2012, when plaintiffs John Mitchell and Sarah Klunk suffered fire, smoke and related damage to their Philadelphia home. When their insurer, Safeco Insurance Co. of Illinois, did not pay damages, Mitchell and Klunk filed a lawsuit in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County, seeking claims for breach of contract and bad faith.
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New York appraiser convicted of fraud for inflated appraisals
Posted Date: Tuesday, July 8, 2014
U.S. Attorney William Hochul, Jr. announced that Darryl Glasco, a Pendleton, N.Y., appraiser, has been convicted of bank fraud for his role in a mortgage fraud scheme that defrauded JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America.
U.S. District Judge Richard Arcara sentenced Glasco to six months of home detention and four years supervised release. Glasco also has been ordered to pay restitution totaling $334,024 to JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America. Glasco faced a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and up to a $1 million fine.
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Lender joins Ellie Mae’s loan quality program
Posted Date: Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Ellie Mae, a provider of on-demand software solutions and services for the residential mortgage industry, announced July 9 that Homeward Residential Inc., a subsidiary of Ocwen Financial Corp., is participating as an investor in Ellie Mae’s Total Quality Loan program. Keep reading for the details.
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New tool aims to simplify management of residential, commercial loans
Posted Date: Tuesday, July 8, 2014
ISGN Corp., a provider of technology solutions and services to the U.S. mortgage industry, announced Trinity Inspection Services LLC has integrated with ISGN’s TCL product, providing construction lending Web-inspection services that streamline the lending process, eliminate duplicate data entry and provide significant enhancements for residential and commercial construction lending. Keep reading to learn about the product’s full capabilities.
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NAHB supports legislation promoting energy-efficiency standards
Posted Date: Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Bipartisan legislation introduced July 8 by Reps. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., would help promote savings in commercial buildings and residential homes through the use of more cost-effective energy codes, which set energy-efficiency baselines for buildings, according to the National Association of Home Builders. Continue reading to learn what the proposed legislation would entail.
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AVMs: Hop on board the train, or get left behind?
Posted Date: Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Since the development of the first commercially marketed automated valuation model (AVM) in 1981, appraisers, investment professionals and lending institutions have been using these powerful, technology-driven reports to calculate a property’s value at a specific point in time by analyzing values of comparable properties.
By the dawn of this millennium, AVM technology was used primarily by institutional investors to determine risk when purchasing collateralized mortgage loans. Today, AVMs are often deployed by mortgage lenders to determine a property’s worth. They are particularly useful in assessing the value of a property and are an important tool in the belts of many successful appraisal professionals who use them to streamline their business and save time, money and resources.
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Why you should be concerned about the CFPB – Part 2
Posted Date: Wednesday, July 9, 2014
In Part One of this two-part series, we explained why you need to keep an eye on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). It has a long-reaching investigatory arm, and even if you think you are beyond its grasp, you might not be. If you do come under an investigation, the next concern is what an enforcement action could look like. In Part Two, we review the CFPB’s extensive enforcement powers.
One significant weapon the agency has in its arsenal is the ability to commence its own civil actions.
“The CFPB is a bureau, and it’s part of the Fed,” said Mitchel Kider, chairman and managing partner at Weiner Brodsky Kider PC, at October Research, LLC’s 2014 National Settlement Services Summit. “But in reality, it is about the most independent agency you are ever going to run into. They can bring cases in court or administratively in their own name with their own attorneys, and they don’t have to check with anyone else.”
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Commercial lender names two new executives to Western branch
Posted Date: Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Grandbridge Real Estate Capital LLC announced July 8 it has hired a new senior vice president to manage the firm's new Rockies Region based in Denver. Along with this hire, Grandbridge has also hired a new vice president in the Denver office to help Grandbridge in its mission to finance all types of income-producing properties. Keep reading to learn about the team’s new additions.
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Foreclosure inventory is slowly moving in right direction
Posted Date: Wednesday, July 9, 2014
CoreLogic, a global property information, analytics and data-enabled services provider, released its May National Foreclosure Report July 8, which provides data on completed U.S. foreclosures and foreclosure inventory. According to CoreLogic’s data, the foreclosure inventory has dropped precipitously over the last year. Keep reading for the report’s details.
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Why you should be concerned about the CFPB – Part 1
Posted Date: Tuesday, July 8, 2014
One particular reason you should be concerned about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is because the bureau is concerned about you — or at least your interactions with consumers. If what you are doing is violating a federal consumer financial law, the CFPB is going to take interest and likely take action. With the amount of power this agency has, that should concern anyone who is working under the CFPB’s purview. Even if you think the bureau can’t touch you, there’s a chance it can.
When the bureau opened its doors in July 2011, it took over the regulatory authority for 19 consumer financial laws. You may be wondering why you or your company would be subject to CFPB enforcement if you see yourself as falling into one of the agency’s covered persons categories. The issue is, however, that if anything you do falls within the purview of one or more of those 19 laws, then the bureau’s authority can reach you.
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MBA and Operation HOPE partner to enhance homeownership opportunities
Posted Date: Tuesday, July 8, 2014
The Mortgage Bankers Association and Operation HOPE, a nonprofit private banker for the working poor, the underserved and struggling middle class, announced June 27 that they have entered into a strategic alliance designed to foster open communication and mutual understanding of issues related to sustainable residential mortgage lending. The announcement was made at MBA’s Strategic Markets and Diversity Summit in Washington, D.C., where HOPE’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Hope Bryant delivered special remarks. Keep reading for the details.
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More data, more specialization, more money: How the role of appraisers is changing forever
Posted Date: Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Valuation leaders across the industry descended upon Las Vegas for the Valuation Expo June 23-25 to share insights on the current state of the appraisal profession and the direction that it is heading. Over the course of the three-day event, many topics were touched upon, but if there was a prevailing theme, it might be this: The days of using three comps to come to a value conclusion are over, and the era of Big Data has begun.
Big Data, defined simply, is a collection of complex data sets. With more analytics available by the day in our computer-run world, knowing how to use Big Data to come to appropriate appraisal values is going to redefine the role of appraisers in the coming years.
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Alaska amends real estate appraiser law
Posted Date: Wednesday, July 2, 2014
On June 20, Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell signed into law Senate Bill 129, a measure to amend state law to comply with the requirements of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989, as amended by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
By passing the new law, Alaska joins many other states that have been working to bring their regulation of real estate appraisers in line with the standards promulgated by the Dodd-Frank Act. Any requirements established by states for certified real estate appraisers, trainees and supervisors must meet or exceed the minimum Appraiser Qualifications Board (AQB) requirements. Some of these requirements were implemented in 2013, and a new wave of requirements will take effect on Jan. 1, 2015.
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No need to fear, a bubble’s not near
Posted Date: Wednesday, July 2, 2014
New data from Trulia, an online provider of real estate information for industry professionals, shows that those still reeling from the housing bubble collapse nearly a decade ago can breathe a sigh of relief — even the most overpriced U.S. markets appear to be safe from bubble territory.
The data comes from Trulia’s “Bubble Watch,” which is a quarterly assessment of how home prices currently sit in relation to their historical value. Trulia economists look at price-to-income ratio, price-to-rent ratio and long-term pricing trends to assess where prices sit on a spectrum ranging from undervalued to overvalued.
The second-quarter data shows that home prices are undervalued by 3 percent nationally. To put this in perspective, at the height of the bubble, home prices were overvalued by 39 percent in 2006 and undervalued by as much as 15 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011.
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Lender names new vice president of the Pacific Northwest
Posted Date: Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Envoy Mortgage, a Houston-based mortgage bank conducting business through its nationwide retail locations, correspondent lending channel and in-house loan servicing operation, has named a new regional vice president for the company’s Pacific Northwest territory, which is composed of Washington, Oregon and Idaho. The new hire will lead the company’s expansion in the tri-state region through natural growth and strategic branch acquisitions.
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