I was sent an email clip of a spot on today’s CNBC broadcast covering the existing home sales stats released for California, except I was included in the broadcast. Unless it was due to too much Easter candy, I didn’t remember being on the show today. 😉
Real estate correspondent Jane Wells reached into her video archive and pulled out an interview we did in 2005 where I estimated 75% of all appraisals were inflated. I remember that my concerns fell largely on deaf ears in the industry back then. Its been a frustrating three years. (And to her comment, her hair looks just as great now).
It was a picture in picture clip, where the anchors watched the tv that was playing the interview. Very cool. I actually posted the same clip of the 2005 interview a little over a week ago.
While it’s satisfying to be proven correct (and have actual video evidence), it’s a shame the lights were on and nobody was home (sorry). She was one of the few national correspondents that covered the housing market at that time that understood the “appraiser” problem growing at an alarming rate.
It’s making me feel both a little old and like a broken record because I have been saying the same thing since that interview (and at least a year before) but finally there is some hope for change.
Appraisers need to be able to perform independently to be able to function.
What was striking about the home sale stats she mentioned was that 1/3 of all sales in California were foreclosures in February. Crazy.
One Comment
Comments are closed.
Jonathan –
As one of the many disenfranchised (honest) fee appraisers who has left the residential appraising business, I find your ‘dejau-vu-all-over-again’ comment on the reuse of your prior interview very telling.
I am not sure that in my “moderate rise probable low fall market” there will be tremendous impact in terms of percentage – nor do I care to think that 75% or 80 % of my local competition overvalued by a significant percentage… but the appraisers who drifted into my market area from ‘other areas’ and made the needed number ought to be lined up and shot, and I do mean 100% of them.
I do know that the fox has been in charge of the henhouse for far too long, and rather than continue in a business headed for disaster, one of my households two appraisers had to find alternate employment.
Since you seem to be getting airtime, feel free to cite the 10,101 appraisers who have been signing the Appraisers Petition since 2002… when I last remarked on the phenominon in 2004 there were over 7000 individuals who protested as spoke to the concerns you noted… The link to that petition is http://appraiserspetition.com/ and the plaints registered there are as timely today as they were then.
So are the proposed solutions.
Sadly by the time we bail out the scumbags and fools who perpetrated this iteration of lending crisis, my grandchildren will be cursing us, and the retirees who have lost their food and medicine money, will be long dead.
Please feel free to tell ’em again. Maybe someone who cares will (eventually) listen?