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Daily Real Estate News | May 8, 2008
Appraisers Feel Subprime Heat
The property appraisal industry has been under pressure to clean up its act in the wake of the meltdown of the subprime lending market.
Most recently Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae signed onto an agreement between New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight that requires lenders selling homes to Freddie and Fannie to use outside appraisers.
Long-time San Diego appraiser Rick Foos, who served on an Appraisal Institute committee charged with reviewing the Cuomo agreement, defends his profession.
"Real estate isn't a black-and-white subject," Foos says. "You can have two competent appraisers who appraise the same property and have different opinions. “
When an appraiser tells someone a home isn't worth an agreed-upon sales price, it naturally triggers protest, he says. Besides making the buyer and the seller unhappy, "you are affecting the commission to a loan agent, and you are affecting the commission to a real estate [practitioner]."
Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune, Emmet Pierce (05/04/08)
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