MountainSeed Appraisal Management LLC, a full-service residential and commercial appraisal-management firm, has launched a new program that makes it easier for licensed and certified appraisers to offer commercial evaluations to community and regional lenders. Real-estate evaluations are valuations of real property prepared in connection with typically low-risk transactions that qualify for one of three specific appraisal exemptions provided in the federal bank regulators’ appraisal regulations.
“Because we work so closely with the appraisal community we always scratched our head at why appraisers, who were most qualified to do an evaluation, were not getting these assignments,” said Carl Streck, chief executive officer of MountainSeed Appraisal Management LLC. “Over the past few months we have worked with the lending and appraisal communities to resolve the communication breakdown and develop a program to offer evaluation assignments to appraisers.”
MountainSeed will be presenting a complimentary one-hour webinar on Thursday, July 12 at 2:00 p.m., Eastern, to provide the basics of commercial evaluations and describe the new appraiser evaluation program. Information on the webinar and registration are found at https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/711576470.
The program gives banks that may have been forced to rely on less-skilled employees or analysts the ability to draw on the deep expertise of the appraisal community. The program educates appraisers on how to perform what a bank calls an evaluation in an appraisal format. MountainSeed will also be educating commercial lenders on the product.
“The beauty of our new product is it exemplifies our continuing commitment to the appraiser community by finding ways to get them work that they didn’t have before,” Streck said. “It also gives our clients the ability to order an evaluation in markets like Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Michigan, Florida, Connecticut and others where state-law licensing issues may prevent or make it difficult for unlicensed persons to perform them.”
The Interagency Appraisal and Evaluation Guidelines, issued in December of 2010, provide specific standards for evaluations. While those guidelines do not require that a licensed appraiser prepare an evaluation, they do expressly permit a licensed appraiser to prepare an evaluation. However, many appraisers have expressed concern that preparing an evaluation may violate the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP), the appraisal standards by which most states require all licensed appraisers to comply, especially because of so-called scope of work rules and the fact that the reporting requirements of USPAP require an appraiser to use one of only three recognized appraisal reporting forms. But USPAP provides the flexibility appraisers need to prepare an evaluation.