News By Edition

Valuation Review traveled to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 24 for the Appraisal Subcommittee Appraisal Bias hearing from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau headquarters.

Witnesses delivered testimony before a panel of government organizations. Appraisal Institute President Craig Steinley, who testified at the hearing, shared some of his thoughts with us on the day’s proceedings.

Read on for our live coverage from Washington.

RCLCO, in Bethesda, Md., reported master-planned communities, just like the broader U.S. housing market, saw a decline in home sales last year compared with 2021.

This is according to an article shared with Valuation Review by Mortgage Bankers Association’s Michael Tucker titled “Master-Planned communities See Sales Decline.”

Read on to learn more.

JLL Valuation Advisory recently announced it has hired a seven-person team led by Executive Vice President Charles Argianas within its complex real estate analysis & litigation support group.

Argianas and his team will focus primarily on litigation, arbitration and complex valuation assignments.

Read on to learn the identities of this team.

Veteran appraiser Kim Wood has been determining opinions of value since 1987.

To say he has seen many changes over the course of that time would be an understatement, and he shared a few of those changes with Valuation Review.

Read on for the full conversation.

Accurate Group recently announced the hiring of a new chief appraiser.

She will manage the company’s staff appraisers, appraisal compliance and regulatory issues.

Read on to find out who the new hire is.

Freddie Mac recently announced its Single-Family and Multifamily Credit Risk Transfer programs acquired credit protection of approximately $833 million on more than $50 billion unpaid principal balance of mortgage loans, brokered by Aon plc. This is a professional services firm, sub-brokered by certified minority-business enterprise Protecdiv in 2022.

In the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, Brigid and Joseph Washington sued Wells Fargo Bank, Accurate Appraisal Service, and Bryan Klosterman, alleging racial discrimination in the appraisal of their home as part of a refinancing application.

Wells Fargo moved to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim.

Read on for more from this court case.

The Mortgage Bankers Association Builder Application Survey data for December 2022 shows mortgage applications for new home purchases decreased 25.2 percent compared with a year ago. Compared with November 2022, applications decreased by 5 percent.

This change does not include any adjustment for typical seasonal patterns.

Read on to learn more.

In November 2022, 2.9 percent of mortgages were delinquent by at least 30 days or more, including those in foreclosure.

This represents a 0.7 percentage point decrease in the overall delinquency rate compared with November 2021.

Read on for more from the CoreLogic report.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will imminently publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in the Federal Register to fulfill the promise of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. The proposed rule aims to remedy the effects of the long history of discrimination in housing and will help to foster opportunity in communities across the country where every resident can thrive.

Fannie Mae supports the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s enhanced radon testing standards to better identify properties with elevated levels of radon, ensuring a more sustainable multifamily environment. The new standards will increase testing of ground floor units from 10 percent to 25 percent for most Fannie Mae multifamily properties.

The conversation within the appraisal industry is heating up again when it comes to modernization.

Valuation Review recently caught up with Opteon CEO Chris Knight, who shared his thoughts on this, as well as other advanced alternative methods appraisers can utilize.

Read on to learn more about what Knight told us.

Reggora delivered its Appraisal Performance Index, its first study to index appraisal operations trends across the mortgage industry.

To examine the results of the study, Reggora is offering private benchmarking sessions for lenders who would like to view the database in detail and see how their operations perform within their regions, the company announced in a release.

Read on to learn more.

Southern Oregon resident Mike Kiser, 53, alleges his home was appraised at a lower value because he is married to a man, according to TV station WUSA9.

The couple decided to refinance their home with a lender.

Read on for more details.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, in partnership with the National Institute of Building Sciences and MOD X, released the Offsite Construction for Housing: Research Roadmap. This is a strategic report that presents the key knowledge gaps and research needs to overcome the barriers and challenges to offsite construction.

Loss mitigation options will be expanded and enhanced for borrowers struggling to pay on their Federal Housing Administration-insured mortgages. Specifically, the temporary COVID-19 recovery loss mitigation options will be extended to all eligible borrowers, including non-occupant borrowers, regardless of their claimed hardship.

The Appraiser Qualifications Board (AQB) released the First Exposure Draft of proposed changes to the Real Property Appraiser Qualification Criteria. These proposed changes would make fair housing a required component of an appraiser’s qualifying and continuing education.

Recently, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced the availability of at least $80,681,000 for the Community Compass TA Program and capacity-building activities for HUD’s customers. This program is focused on solving complex housing and community development challenges by equipping HUD customers with the knowledge, skills, tools, and systems to implement agency programs and policies successfully.

Real estate technology company Voxtur Analytics Corp. announced Chad Neel has been appointed chief operating officer. Neel brings more than 30 years of experience in mortgage finance and real estate to Voxtur.

Pending home sales increased in December for the first time since May 2022, following six consecutive months of declines, according to the National Association of Realtors. The Northeast and Midwest recorded month-over-month reductions, while the South and West posted monthly gains.

House prices fell 0.1 percent nationwide in November compared with October, according to the latest Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index. House prices rose 8.2 percent from November 2021 to November 2022.

Valuation Review concludes its conversation with 2023 Appraisal Institute President Craig Steinley.

Education and training were a couple of final points stressed by Steinley.

Read on for the conclusion of our conversation.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) formally approved the Texas PACE Authority’s request to offer its energy and water-saving financing tool. The funds involve HUD and Federal Housing Administration multifamily properties in Texas.

Fannie Mae announced its selection of five organizations to receive “deliverable-based contracts” as part of the Sustainable Communities Innovations Challenge, a nationwide competition to help advance racial equity in housing.