WILL APPRAISERS CAUSE PROPERTY VALUES TO PLUMMET? DO SHIPS ROCK AT SEA?

DISCLAIMER: This post does not mean to offend any hardworking Appraisers who do their job like everybody else. This is just about the ones that I know.

In recent posts I have seen people's concerns about property values declining further by the hands of crooked Appraisers. There is reason to be concerned. When the boom was on appraisers who walked the gray line would manipulate property values every day. If you wanted to refinance and get that extra Ten Thousand out of the deal all you had to do was find the right appraiser to do the job. If you wanted to receive Cash Back at Closing there were appraisers who would skew the numbers and make a $300,000 Property look like a $450,000 Property. They would go as far as take pictures of another home - stick it in their appraisal package, and submit it to an out of town bank. Most of the time they would get away with it. The key to manipulating values and defrauding banks is having a dependable corrupt appraiser on your team. If they are self-employed or working for a small firm a crooked appraisers will do what they have to do to make a deal happen. Now that properties are in decline the scam works in the opposite direction. Say you want to do a Loan Modification, or you want to buy a home and get the value reduced way down. Say you want to convince the bank the property is worthless, maybe worth less than half of its original value. Don't you want the lowest appraised value you can find? For a fee there is an appraiser out there who will provide it for you. It doesn't matter that the game is working in an inverse proportion of how it used to work - it's still a game; and when you have a game you are going to have players. So make no mistake, some property values will decline at the hands of appraisers on the take. I'm sure that some day they will crack down more on Appraisers. They are being scrutinized more now than they were a couple of years ago, but there still there is the hired Gun Slingers out there that will continue to get away with murder. Maybe they should make it a little harder to become an Appraiser as well as they should make it harder to become a Realtor. To become an Appraiser you have to finish a course that is given at any school that teaches Real Estate either in a classroom or on-line. The course last a couple of months and you are given a certificate. At least that's how it works in Nevada, I don't know the rules for all the other states. Then the Appraiser has to find an apprenticeship which lasts two years. After the two year requirement is met the Appraiser gets a license and can go to work on their own. They are not really monitored by any governing body so they have the opportunity to stick their hands out. Unless they are reported to the Division of Industry for unethical practices or misconduct they can carry on doing what they do for years and years. Once in awhile they do get caught. I know of one who had to move back to Iran for all the dirty stuff he did as an appraiser in the United States. Bad appraisers are kind of like cockroaches - you can keep on fumigating but you'll never really get rid of them.

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