About 150 attendees logged into FNC’s Dodd-Frank webinar last week. FNC general counsel Neil Olson and executive vice president of corporate development David Work provided an overview of the new law’s 2,319 pages. First and foremost, the new act has 16 titles and creates 12 new federal regulatory agencies which will be established in the next months. The regulatory agencies include the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Title X), the largest and most broad ranging of the new regulatory

average rating:

Forget loan mods, low interest rates and scrapping Fannie and Freddie. As sales of previously occupied homes plunged last month to their lowest level in 15 years, economist Gerald Celente says the only thing that will save US housing is a boom in American job creation. Celente's predictions have proved correct many times. He is credited with predicting the 1987 stock market crash, the economic collapse of the Soviet Union and the subprime mortgage bubble and bust.

"There's no double

average rating:

The Congressman who cosponsored the sweeping financial reform act told Fox News that he believes Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be scrapped. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, was asked by Fox Business Network’s Neil Cavuto what role Fannie and Freddie should play in housing markets.

"I think they should be abolished," Frank replied. "The only question is what do you put in their place. This is a situation where given the importance they had come to

average rating:

This past Tuesday, mortgage executives, financial leaders, and economists met with U.S. Treasury officials to share ideas about the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both of which are in conservatorship. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said there would be “fundamental change” to the structure of the two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). Geithner also said, “We will not support a return to the system where private gains are subsidized by taxpayer losses.”

The U.S.

average rating:

As a recent seller of a three-bedroom condominium, my experience with the appraisal on the property was disappointing. The appraised value seemed to needlessly reinforce a new low for the market and there were a number of inaccuracies in the appraisal report.

In this property, the sellers and buyers had negotiated a sales price of $122,000. The appraisal came in at $112,500. (The subject condo is in a development of

average rating:

The Appraisal Institute’s Southern California Chapter—the largest of its chapters in the country—hosted its 16th Annual Summer conference on Thursday, July 29, 2010. The chapter presented an excellent program of continuing education that was well attended by both residential and commercial appraisers.

Of particular interest to residential appraisers was a panel presentation—The Changing Role and Responsibilities of AMCs in the Current Marketplace. Panelists included Wes

average rating:

The entire nation continues to watch Louisiana,The Pelican State, as it deals with the disaster off the gulf coast.

While many discuss the impact to the gulf coast, no one will be able to effectively predict the true impact on Louisiana housing prices or the housing market for quite some time.

Part of evaluating impact would be to evaluate the housing market prior to the gulf oil crisis. If we take a step back and review the activity from November 2009 through May 2010,

average rating:

Every silver lining in the mortgage industry is linked to a big, fat, dark cloud. Fannie Mae just reported that its rate of serious delinquencies for single-family homes dropped to 5.15% in June. Fannie Mae's total business was more than $3.21 trillion at the end of June. Now for that leaden cloud; 75% of the nation’s biggest metropolitan posted year-over-year increases in foreclosure activity, according to Mortgage Orb. Florida, California, Nevada and Arizona racked up the highest

average rating:

An Massachusetts Institute of Technology studey calculates that every foreclosure decreases the value by 1% of all homes within 250 feet. The study examined the sales of 1.8 million Massachusetts homes for the past 22 years. Banks got no bargains when they try to sell a foreclosed home. The MIT study said the average sale price for a foreclosed home was 27% less than the appraised value.

MIT economist Parag Pathak worked with two Harvard researchers, John Y. Campbell and Stefano

average rating:

Most appraisers bear war wounds from this bleak economy and some have seen their livlihoods dwindle away completely. Finally, we have some good news to report to job-hunting appraisers; TSI Appraisal Services announced last week that it will hire more than 100 staff appraisers nationwide.

Troy, Michigan-based TSI has been recognized by Fortune as one of the "100 Best Companies to Work For" in America for four consecutive years. TSI says it facilitates more than 275,000

average rating:

The Appraisal Institute applauded the U.S. Senate for passing a sweeping financial regulatory reform bill that includes the first modernization of real estate appraisal regulations in more than 20 years. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (HR 4173) is the first overhaul of appraisal regulations since the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA) was enacted in 1989.

President Barack Obama is expected to sign it into law. “This

average rating:

The original March 2008 agreements between the Attorney General of New York, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (now the Federal Housing Finance Agency) and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that established the Home Valuation Code of Conduct will expire in November 2010 (originally July 2010). After that, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are no longer obligated to maintain the HVCC.

In addition, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which has already

average rating:

In an effort to continue to improve the quality of the appraisals Fannie Mae receives, the GSE has instituted some new appraisal requirements and made some clarifications. The good news for our customers is that FNC's Collateral Management System® (CMS®) and Collateral Headquarters™ (CHQ) platforms as well as the AI Ready data standard make compliance with these changes essentially automatic. Your appraisers will be able to get you the data you need and your system will be able to track and

average rating:

Click on Los Angeles and the map looks like a red planet exploding. The red lines indicate residents who are leaving LA, mostly for Texas and North Carolina. Black lines indicate residents moving into a county. Here the black lines show you that New Englanders are moving to LA in modest numbers.

average rating:

Two reports rolled out this weekend estimating the loss in property values. The median price for a Gulf Coast home was $173,100 in April before the disaster and an acre of land was valued at $3 million.

Costar Group estimates the oil spill may cost $4.3 billion in property values along the 600 miles from Louisiana’s petrol-streaked beaches to Clearwater on Florida’s central Gulf Coast. But that estimate may already be a lowball; tar balls have been reported in Key West, about 242

average rating:

In a provocative interview with Fortune magazine, economist Robert Shiller (father of the S&P Case-Shiller Home Price indices) advised Americans not to regard real estate as a stellar investment unless they had golden guts, luck and the money to invest in glamour capitals like San Francisco and Manhattan.

He suggested Japan as a case study. "After Japan's 1980s bubble, prices fell for 15 consecutive years in that country's largest cities, and lost almost two thirds of their

average rating:

What makes a city’s housing market a hopeless case? According to Business Insider, it takes a witches’ brew of rocketing unemployment, plunging property values and no white knights (such as a huge company ready to inject jobs and cash into the town) anywhere in sight. Crunching numbers from the National Association of Realtors into local unemployment statistics, the Business Insider came up with this list of 13 cities where housing values will never recover. Do you agree

average rating:

CNN is reporting that BP has, as of yesterday, paid a total of "$75,725 to start settling some of the 446 claims against it for lost income on area rental properties. BP disbursed another $5,000 to cover real-estate sales losses.”

That amount is tiny compared to the more than $40 million in damages BP has paid so far on about half the 32,000 loss of income claims filed. Those claims come mostly from fisheries, tour boats, seafood wholesalers and other small businesses along the Gulf

average rating:

Probably the biggest misconception about FNC is that it is an Appraisal Management Company (AMC). FNC is definitely not an AMC, although many clients that use FNC products and systems are AMCs. FNC is actually a mortgage technology company. So what FNC does is deliver deep expertise in appraisal compliance, workflow best practices, and process efficiency to mortgage lenders, servicers, AMCs, and secondary markets. FNC also provides real estate appraisers with a platform, known as

average rating:

The National Collateral Database™ combines appraisal, public record and other real estate sales and descriptive information into the most powerful real estate information database available to lenders and appraisers for the valuation and analysis of residential property across the United States. It is the National Collateral Database that fuels FNC’s data and analytics products and services.

What lies behind all this? Where does all this data come from, how does it fit together and

average rating:

Most appraisers agree that the implementation of the Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC) nearly a year ago has caused the biggest shake-up in the appraisal industry since licensing back in the early ’90s. However, there is still some disagreement on whether this shake-up has been good or bad for appraisers and lenders. At this point the majority of appraisers are still seeing it as mostly negative.

Many appraisers are struggling to stay afloat these days. They tend to blame the

average rating:

The FNC annual Collateral Management Conference provided an excellent opportunity to discuss the current state of appraisal data delivery initiatives and related dependencies. Senior executives from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA and VA were present as well as executives responsible for collateral at the nation’s leading lenders, servicers and management companies.

We learned that the push to have appraisal data delivered to the secondary market, starting with Fannie Mae, continues

average rating:

It has been an active year for appraisal management company (AMC) legislation. Because of the activity, we presented an update on AMC legislation in June, 2009. Since then we have updated the presentation itself to keep up with the various changes this year (although we did not catch everything).

For those of you who are keeping

average rating:

I will ask the question on the mind of many appraisers today: “How do lenders, servicers, etc. choose the valuation products they order? Specifically why do they choose BPOs (broker price opinions)?

In the origination world, the answer is simple. The lenders don’t order BPOs. Their investors, which today are essentially Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and FHA, don’t allow BPOs for origination.

In the loan servicing world, the investors (those who own the loans) also dictate

average rating:

Recently one of our clients asked us to look at the relationship between sales price and appraised value across the country. We looked at about 200,000 sales transactions over the first nine months of the year and found that most of the appraised values were above the actual sales price.

The chart below shows the percent of purchase transactions where the sales price was above the appraised value.

» read full post

average rating:

posted in: Appraising, FNC, Lending, Mortgage, Valuation