Bob's Blog

Over 80% of my appraisal sales and refinances are FHA now, or USDA, which is a form of FHA.  The approved list of FHA appraisers have grown by leaps and bounds recently but unknown to many is that FHA has restricted approved appraisers to those who hold the "Certified Residential" license.  Before, appraisers who held the lesser certificate know is Ga as "Licensed" could also perform FHA.  "Licensed" appraisers will no longer be able to accept assignments unless they hold a designation with a national appraisal organization like The Appraisal Institute.  The number of "Licensed" appraisers this affects is unknown but if you are a lender please check before you order and if you are a realtor working with an appraiser you need to ask you appraiser if they are still approved. According to my sources in the Appraisers Board, there are over 1000 less appraisers in Ga than this time last year.  Anyway, I haven't seen any increase in orders in the last month since the bailout was supposed to loosen credit.  Perhaps it's too early to tell but the lenders and realtors I work with haven't seen any either.  What are you seeing out there??  Rates for FHA are rising because the banks are adding fees on top, seems counter productive doens't it?  The FED is looking at this and may be elimanated soon.  I did interesting an appraisal FHA appraisal recently on a home where the survey showed an abandoned well on the property. FHA has a real problem with abandoned wells and the owner says they did not where it is.  The agents went to the site and looked for over an hour to no avail. How could this be?  After some scambling I discovered the well was properly filled and capped so no problem with FHA but the curious part was the reason no one could find it is because it is UNDER the house. The home was built on top of it!  A local real estate agent lost an FHA deal because the buyer had a judgement on him for $1000 he says he did't know about (hard to believe) that he agreed to pay a closing out of proceeds but the underwriter denied the loan because the underwriter says it should have been paid 2 years ago.  Please tell me why that is a reason to turn down the loan since he was going to pay it? 

The proposed merger between the NAR and The Appraisal Institute did not pass this week.  The point was, I believe, was to be able to approach congress and whoever else with a large unified voice.  Maybe this will happen anyway.