repost from: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/12/06/appraisal-real-estate/19906355/
Before the mortgage meltdown and the resulting Great Recession, you paid a reasonable price for an appraisal, and your loan officer typically received a reasonable opinion of value that led to your purchase or refinance getting funded.
Not so much anymore. Swift and furious post-crisis reaction from regulators gave birth to the 2009 Home Valuation Code of Conduct or HVCC, and the federal Dodd-Frank Law, passed in 2010, (which made HVCC statutorily mute) making things far worse for you in terms of appraisal cost and resulting valuations.
Appraisal charges have gone up roughly 33%. “Appraisals were $375 before, and since HVCC the prices went up to $500,” said Yorba Linda, Calif., appraiser Myles Lawson.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Appraisal Subcommittee – a federal agency that reviews state regulators of appraisers -could not point to any post-crisis publicly available data on appraisal accuracy when contacted for this column.
Ask any veteran loan originator. The No. 1 reason that transactions fall apart is low-ball appraisals, not tight credit standards. …continue reading the rest of this post: Appraisal hypocrisy hits home
