HVCC, the acronym for “Home Valuation Code of Conduct”, is the result of a legal settlement between NY attorney general Andrew Cuomo and Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac to assure that appraisers would not be unduly influenced by lenders in the appraisal process.
I have blogged about appraisal problems many times in the past. I am not going to repeat those posts. Maybe the data below will carry more weight than my opinion. It is fresh out of a thorough and expensive study that I have cited on this blog recently. I will cut and past comments directly from the study that quotes Realtors. I will let their comments speak for themselves. Read More
I blogged just a few days ago about how a client chose an online lender instead of me. And that lender sent an appraiser to the client’s home who was not local to the marketplace. The appraised value ended up coming in low enough that the client had to pay $45,000 out of pocket to pay the loan down. I am not sure how spending $45,000 in cash Read More
I don’t know how many times I’ll have to say it, “WHEN SHOPPING FOR A MORTGAGE ASK ABOUT THE APPRAISER!” In fact, don’t ask, just read what I have to say first. I have repeatedly said on this blog that many sources for mortgage loans are not to be trusted when it comes to the appraisal. Why?
Is it a problem when buying a home In Falls Church VA and the appraiser comes from Cumberland MD? I am working on an interesting loan that will make for a good case study someday, and I think homebuyers and Realtors will find it interesting too.
I am doing a loan for a homebuyer to buy a single family detached home in Falls Church, Virginia. The sales price was a little over $500,000 and the new loan is a Conventional Fixed rate 80% loan-to-value loan, which of course means we are subject to the HVCC rules. So I ordered the appraisal from the bank’s Appraisal Management Company (AMC).
For once, the appraiser was local, from Falls Church, VA so we all figured this appraiser would know the local marketplace and that we would be getting an accurate and fair appraisal. But the appraisal came in several weeks later at a price approximately $35,000 lower than the sales price. The seller was angry, the Realtors were upset, and the buyer was confused. Read More
Is The Old Lady In The Shoe Real? How would you appraise her shoe home? An appraisal is thought by most consumers to be an exact valuation of the home they are purchasing or refinancing. The reality is that there is no such thing as exactly valuing a home. A home is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. And since different people are willing to pay different prices, the real value is hard to pin down. Read More
