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ELLIOTT’S®
NEW REVUPRO SYSTEM OFFERS
INDEPENDENTLY CERTIFIED APPRAISAL
REVIEWS
 ELLIOTT®
& Company Appraisers has developed a suite of independently
certified products, designed to offer lenders objective, unbiased,
professional appraisal reviews. RevuPro consists of quality control
reports that meet or exceed all governmental regulatory-compliance
mandates.
RevuPro is a multi-phase, appraisal-review
system, run by experts in the appraisal industry. It is designed to
cascade from the most basic to the most comprehensive, permitting
the lender to reduce administrative overhead.
“By using RevuPro, the lender only needs
to purchase the necessary review services, while employing the best
professionals in the appraisal industry,” said Carlyle Holt, vice
president and general manager of ELLIOTT®. “This insures the client
quality control in an economical manner.”
RevuPro offers a
comprehensive risk management system, which would complement the
lenders’ efforts to insure high-quality appraisals from their
appraisal sources, and reduce risks inherent in the mortgage-lending
business. It further offers a firewall between the lender’s loan
officers, administration personnel, underwriting staff and servicing
department. Therefore, it insures the lender an independent review
process, which would not otherwise be possible within an
organization, while permitting the use of lender-selected
appraisers.
HOME
PRICES EXPECTED TO DROP ANOTHER 2% THIS YEAR
Reports by
Reuters and Zelman & Associates, an investment analysis firm,
included predictions that home prices in the United States would
decline another 2% or more in 2011.
Reuters conducted its
study on the subject by surveying 26 prominent economists before
releasing its prediction of a 2.3% decline in home prices this year.
Eighteen of the responding economists said they expected the
foreclosure rate to slow down a bit this year.
“One of the
big question marks that people are not paying enough attention to is
not just the number of foreclosures, but the speed of foreclosures,”
said Standard & Poor’s Chief Economist David Wyss in his response to
Reuters.
In its report, entitled “The Art of Measuring Home
Prices: Deflation Continues, Expect More Pressure in 2011,” Zelman
cited the high percentage of distressed transactions and forecasted
a 2011 average-home-price drop of 2%.
STEVENS
MOVING FROM FHA TO MBA
 David
Stevens, who has served as commissioner of the Federal Housing
Administration (FHA) since July 2009, has announced his resignation
effective March 31. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), shortly
thereafter, announced that Stevens would take over as its new
president on June 1.
“David Stevens is uniquely qualified to
lead the association in its next chapter,” said Michael Berman,
chairman of the MBA. “Most recently he has had a tremendous impact
at FHA, as that program faced its own unprecedented challenges.”
When Stevens arrived at FHA, it was losing money rapidly from
loan defaults and some speculated that it would be subject to
another government bailout. With the demise of many forms of
creative financing, the FHA did significantly increase its market
share and it raised mortgage-insurance fees to borrowers in an
effort to build up its reserve supply.
“We’ve accomplished a
lot; it’s been extraordinarily hard work,” Stevens told the Wall
Street Journal upon his resignation announcement, adding that it was
a “great time for me to transition back to the private sector.”
FORBES REPORTS ORLANDO AS ‘EMPTIEST CITY IN AMERICA’
 A
recent report from Forbes, called “America’s Emptiest Cities,”
listed Orlando at the top of this dubious category. According to the
report, a whopping 23.6% of rental units in the central Florida city
were unoccupied in the fourth quarter of last year. The accompanying
article, written by Daniel Fisher for Forbes, blamed the high figure
on a building boom in apartments there, right before the recession
hit. Orlando’s vacancy rate for single-family homes was 4.3% in
2010’s fourth quarter.
The study only included the top 75
metropolitan areas of the United States. At least one of them,
Dayton, Ohio, had a higher apartment vacancy rate than Orlando, but
the Midwestern city had a lower single-family-home vacancy rate.
Rounding out the top six on the list are (2) Las Vegas,
apartment vacancy rate 13.5%, home vacancy rate 5.5%; (3) Memphis,
Tenn., apartment vacancy rate 16.1%, home vacancy rate 4.7%; (4)
Riverside- San Bernardino, Calif., apartment vacancy 10.4%, home
vacancy 6.4%; (5) Dayton, Ohio, apartment vacancy 26.4%, home
vacancy 3.3%; and (6) Phoenix, apartment vacancy 15.5%, home vacancy
3.4%.
 ASK MARTITIA
QUESTION: It is common knowledge that intentionally
inflating a property’s value on a real estate appraisal report is a
violation of USPAP. Is intentionally deflating a property’s value a
USPAP violation also?
MARTITIA: Yes. The Ethics Rule of the Uniform Standards of
Professional Appraisal Practice requires that appraisers “be
independent, impartial and objective” and that they “perform
assignments without bias.” If an appraiser intentionally deflates
his or her opinion of value of a property on an appraisal report,
that appraiser would be in violation of the Conduct section of the
Ethics Rule.
Martitia Mortimer, Elliott’s executive vice president, answers
appraisal questions on a regular basis in Elliott Evaluation
News.
QUOTES
“Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.” –
Lily Tomlin
“The accomplice to the crime of corruption
is frequently our own indifference.” – Bess Myerson
“I can usually judge a fellow by what he laughs at.” – Wilson
Mizner
“Today’s greatest labor-saving device is
tomorrow.” – Woodrow Wilson
“Setting goals for your
game is an art. The trick is in setting them at the right level,
neither too low nor too high.”
– Greg Norman
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