Appraiser Whores

After the nation's last major banking disaster, Congress set up a system to catch rogue appraisers. Their game: inflating the value of homes at the direction of equally unscrupulous real estate agents and mortgage brokers, whose commissions are determined by the size of the deals.

This is one of the major reasons for the problems and later this afternoon I will have more on this as I find this practice totally disgusting!

It's even more than disgusting because in some cases it's unlawful but that's otay this is Amerika where there is no accountability.

I can speak to this directly because my brother is an appraiser and has been for years. In this state there is a code of ethics appraisers are to follow which is part of the licensing process. A major part of those ethics is that an appraiser follows certain guidelines that are extensive so that he or she can give a "competent" appraisal. That is the key word in all of this.

Simply my brother quit doing appraisals because of the extreme pressure put on him by real estate agents, lenders and the seller to artificially inflate values. Since he takes his job seriously he refused to do so and was basically blackballed. Later some calls were coming in but the same shit was going on. He still has his business but does not do any. Even with that for some time now every week he goes to the court house and documents recent sales. If he has not appraised it he makes the trip to the property so that he can update his files which consist of three filing cabinets and most of two hard drives so if and when the time comes he wishes to appraise a property he will be able to make that competent appraisal. I admire him for the stance he has taken by not whoring himself out like so many of the others but it has cost him for that without a doubt. I wish he would write about his experiences bit I know his answer would be no if asked.

In this market in the last several years there was a sky rocketing of real estate values that was not warranted. Shit box houses in this town that were selling for 40-50K have prices on them of 2-300K and that ain't no shit cisco. In the county seat it was even worse. A friend bought his maybe 17 years ago for 84K and houses of the same type in his neighborhood were selling for over 700K. Most of this increase happened in the last few years. Although it took a bit longer the market downturn has hit here with a vengeance. There are many who will never be able to get out as they paid so much more than it's worth. "Oh the market always come back" they say. My ass not this time if ever and certainly not anytime soon.

My point of this rant is that it is my belief that those involved in this process because of several reasons greed being at the top have made this situation what it is and I despise them for it. They are whores plain and simple and should be held accountable for their devious and unscrupulous actions but they won't. Sonsofbitches!!