Matrix Blog

I have a lot of good friends and colleagues who frequently give at least a passing thought to quitting the Appraisal Institute, the largest real estate appraisal industry trade group. At the national level, the association has lost the ability to work for its members and has instead, shifted into a political failure spiral by enacting policies that are against their chapters’ and members’ best interests.

I get these types of comments from members at get togethers who say things like…

“I am only paying my dues to retain my designation.”

“The chapters are the only relevant thing AI provides to help me.”

“The self-dealing politics at National sickens me.”

Their announcement of the new administrative policy on November 30, 2016 continues the trend:

As you might have heard by now, the Appraisal Institute Board of Directors recently took a significant step to enhance your chapter’s ability to focus its attention on providing member services by reducing your current administrative burden. This is great news for chapters.

Here’s the letter that was sent to chapter leaders:

It reminds me of an old IRS joke: The IRS agent walks into your office with arms extended for a handshake and says:

“I’m from the IRS and I’m here to help you.”

It has been discouraging to watch the Appraisal Institute (National) erode into irrelevance while the appraisal industry is crying out for leadership at a seminal moment in our history. Dodd-Frank is about to be gutted and appraisal management companies have run out of appraisers willing to work for half pay. Instead they have morphed into a trade group that is unable to help its members. I challenge my readers to provide any evidence of such leadership since the financial crisis.

One of the only remaining redeeming features of the Appraisal Institute aside from their SRA and MAI designations has been the strength of local chapters. It’s where the rubber hits the road, where appraisers press the flesh at local meetings, take classes and listen and interact with guest speakers. The real value of AI membership remains at the chapter level.

At the Appraisal Institute headquarters in Chicago (National), they clearly recognize the power of the local chapters. For an organization that has been encumbered by procedural minutae, they developed the ability to enact policy without input or oversight. Here’s the current controversy over a non-vetted decree from National that involves money.

National has enacted a new policy that requires all money at the chapter level be administered by National. It’s a political power grab that will further alienate dues paying members. This is part of the growing pattern of AI’s lack of communication to their members.

The response

The very large New York Metro chapter responded in a letter from their board 2 days later – about being blind sided by the new policy. It’s an incredible read – a full-on indictment of the thinking of National. So many great appraisers in that chapter but how long will they put up with this? You can see how hard the local chapter is holding back it’s anger for such a policy. See link for pdf or the full text below. Bold emphasis provided by me.

AI Metropolitan New York Chapter Board Letter to AI National Board

December 2, 2016

Dear Members of the Appraisal Institute Board of Directors:

This letter is being submitted on behalf of the Board of the Metropolitan New York Chapter of the Appraisal Institute as a response to the National Board’s recent decision to implement a new Appraisal Institute Chapter Financial Management and Administration Policy. The Metro New York Board met this week and unanimously agreed to communicate our disapproval of the new policy and our astonishment that such a major change could be effectuated without any sort of prior notification or consultation with the Chapters and the Membership. Furthermore, to announce this decision as a fait accompli late on a Friday before a holiday week is alarming to our Chapter’s Directors.

The Metro New York Board finds it surprising and unacceptable that such a significant policy change in the governance of Chapter finances could be constructed without any transparency, input or dialogue with the Chapters and Membership. Simply being informed that national will take over our Chapter funds, albeit with assurances of our continued control of our finances, is outrageous paired with the admission that “Adjustments may have to be made to the policy as implementation progresses.” By creating this plan, effectively behind closed doors, you have not instilled any sort of confidence that the policy you are demanding we accept is acceptable to the Chapter. Given that the Appraisal Institute has a model for gaining feedback from the Membership – with the 45-day notice model provided for other significant actions impacting Members and Chapters – the Metro New York Board feels it is not at all appropriate for the national Board of Directors to unilaterally create this new policy in such an opaque manner. Given the potentially serious impacts of this new policy on the individual Chapters, we believe a more extended, perhaps 90-day notice would be minimally appropriate particularly given that this change was basically “sprung on” the Chapters on the advent of the holiday season that creates extra demands on all of us.

Beyond our uneasiness with the lack of transparency and how this new policy was implemented, the Metro New York Board finds the policy itself to be unacceptable. We believe that turning over our funds to national would limit and impact the autonomy of our Chapter and potentially diminish our stature in the local real estate community. The Metro New York Chapter is one of the most active Chapters and has been diligent in providing necessary education opportunities for our members and candidates, organizing enriching events for our members and the broader New York City real estate community, and fostering a supportive framework to help candidates work towards their designations. Importantly, this last goal contributes to the health of the organization nationally. Many of these programs are supported by our members through a historically successful Chapter sponsorship program. We believe our success in these endeavors illustrates that we are proficient in managing our own funds, maintaining reserves, and knowing how to do what needs to be done on a local basis. Certainly stripping the Chapter of its funds, particularly under terms that may be subject to change, will undermine the Chapter membership’s confidence that our efforts to maintain the economic health of the Chapter constitute time well spent. Furthermore, several Chapter sponsors who have consistently supported Chapter endeavors have expressed concern about this change in policy and that it may impact their willingness to continue such sponsorships in the future considering the substantial loss of Chapter autonomy as a result of the new policy changes.

While we look forward to hearing more details regarding the new policy from National on Tuesday’s call, the Metropolitan New York Chapter Board strongly urges the National Board to reconsider implementing this new policy.

Appraisal Institute, New York Metro Chapter
John A. Katinos, MAI, President
On behalf of the Metro New York Chapter Board of Directors

I heard a rumor that AI wants to do away with chapters and I’ve also been told that is not true – but with the opaqueness of National, I don’t know what to believe. And I keep hearing rumors about AI spending millions to expand their footprint across the globe but haven’t seen any measurable success let alone share the status of this effort with members. Is esoteric global expansion worth raising dues in a compensation compressed environment? Is the membership even aware of this effort and the millions supposedly lost?

Most of my peers nationwide have expressed frustration with an organization mired in self-serving politics. And it only seems to be getting worse.

My moment of zen was their self inflicted and childish exit of the Appraisal Foundation a few years ago. I eventually left AI and moved on to two other organizations that provide what appraisers are looking for. Remember that most of us are “lone wolves” and belong to organizations to get other perspectives. I can’t tell you how many SRAs and MAIs I know are talking about leaving the organization.

And did you ever wonder why there are so many statewide appraisal coalitions popping up? It’s largely because of inaction by National or their opposition to issues important to appraisers.

Incidentally, this new policy parallels the changes made by the Chinese government a while back. They moved the majority of the tax income stream from the provinces to the national government. This forced the provinces to go hat in hand to the national government to beg for an allotment of income each year. Sound familiar?

Lots of graft ensued for the provinces to get their “share” of revenue. In fact one of the reasons there are as many as 40 ghost cities in China right now is because the provinces were incentivized to generate GDP. What better way to do that then to build cities for several hundred thousand residents that would never come.

The moral of the story: central planning is never efficient. Through the loophole that National installed allowing them to modify this policy at anytime in the future is a recipe for disastrous self-dealing.

This is the appraisal industry’s moment to have some impact on our future. There are many challenges in front of us. The Appraisal Institute on a national level is now officially obsolete.

Enough with the self-dealing. We don’t make enough money collectively to fund their boondoggle. We need leadership, not politics.

Tags: Appraisal Institute, Metropolitan New York Chapter of AI, AI National

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S&P CoreLogic used it’s National Non-Seasonally Adjusted Housing Price Index to declare that the housing market has recovered. Even the ironies of this public relations effort have ironies. I’ll explain.

First, look at this classic Case-Shiller chart. Notice how the arrows don’t connect to the lines they are associated? I’m being petty but it looks like the chart was updated and rushed out the door.

Incidentally, who controls the Case-Shiller Indices brand these days? It used to be “S&P/Case-Shiller Indices.” Here are a couple of variations found in the first paragraph of the press release:

• S&P Dow Jones Indices
• S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices

but I digress

Since the financial crisis, I have spent a good deal of time explaining away the reliability of the Case Shiller Index.

To be clear, I greatly admire Robert Shiller, the Nobel Laureate and his pioneering work in economics. I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with him on a number of occasions both publicly and privately. He and I were on stage together at Lincoln Center back during the housing bubble for a Real Deal event.

During the bubble I was the public face of a short lived Wall Street start-up that collapsed when the bubble burst. Like Case-Shiller it was built to enable the hedging of the housing market to mitigate risk using a different methodology, avoiding the repeat-sales method used in CS. The firm had annoyed Shiller by constantly citing the issues with the CS index and we got far more traction from Wall Street with our index that was (literally) built by rocket scientists. It got to the point where he mentioned me and the startup by name at a conference in frustration.

After I disconnected with the startup before it imploded, I reached out and we made up. In fact he did my Housing Helix podcast (link broken but hope to bring it back online soon for historical reference) at my office back when I was doing a podcast series of interviews with key people in housing). Also we’ve run into each other on the street in Manhattan a number of times. In fact when he learned of my love of sea kayaking he gave me the latitude and longitude coordinates of his island vacation home in case I was nearby. You can see that I feel a little guilty criticizing the use of the index since he is one of the nicest and smartest people I’ve ever had the honor to meet.

But I don’t like the way S&P, Dow Jones and/or CoreLogic have positioned Case-Shiller as a consumer benchmark. And especially yesterday’s announcement as a marker for the recovery of the U.S. housing market. I feel this is a low brow attempt by these institutions to leverage publicity without much thought applied to what is actually being said. Here are some thoughts on why it is inappropriate to use this moment as a marker for the housing recovery.

“The new peak set by the S&P Case-Shiller CoreLogic National Index will be seen as marking a shift from the housing recovery to the hoped-for start of a new advance” says David M. Blitzer, Managing Director and Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Blitzer remains in the very awkward position of explain away the gap between the market 6 months ago and current condition as if there is no difference. He does this by using anecdotal commentary about metrics like supply that has nothing to do with the price index as well as making pithy remarks.

• The Case-Shiller National Index is being touted for reaching the record set in the housing bubble a decade ago despite the record being set back then by artificial aka systemic mortgage fraud. However their 20 city index has been pushed as the key housing benchmark for more than a decade, not the national index. And they are using the non-seasonally adjusted national index to proclaim the record beaten despite their long time preference of presenting seasonally adjusted indices (the seasonally adjusted national index has not broken the housing bubble record yet).

• The credit bubble got us to the 2006 peak, not anything fundamental.

• In my thirty years of valuation experience, I have learned that sales transactions, not prices, should be the benchmark for a housing market’s health.

• The 0% markets that reached the 2006 peak are super frothy – created by rapidly expanding economies and an inelastic housing supply. Income growth doesn’t always justify their price growth. Click on table below for the markets shaded in turquoise.

Some important background points on the Case Shiller Home Price Index (CS) – that most of its users are unaware of:

• CS was never intended for consumer use! It was built for Wall Street to trade derivatives to hedge housing market risk much like hedging risk for weather, insurance, non-fat dry milk and cheddar cheese.

• CS never caught on because housing is a slow and lumbering asset class, unlike a stock which has much more liquidity. The flaw during this bubble period was the way Wall Street and most real estate market participants considered housing as liquid as a stock and how financial engineering had enabled that liquidity.

• As access to public housing data has become more ubiquitous, the index has been more easily gamed by companies like Zillow, who have been able to accurately predict the index results much sooner rendering the index as useless for hedging.

• CS lags the actual “meeting of the minds” between by buyers and sellers – when they agree on the price and general terms – by 5-7 months. The November report just released was based on the 3 month moving average of closed sales from July, August and September. If we say that contract to close period is an average of 60 days, then the contracts signed in this batch of data represent May, June and July. And the time between the “meeting of the minds” and the signed contracts can be a couple of weeks, so the results in yesterday’s lease of the Case-Shiller index represents the period around Memorial Day weekend as summer was getting started.

• CS only represents single family homes (although they have an index for condos).

• CS excludes new development.

• There is little if any seasonality in the CS methodology (even though there is a seasonally adjusted version).

• Geographic areas in the 10 and 20 city CS indices are incredibly broad. For example, the “New York” index includes New York City, Long Island, Hamptons, Fairfield County, Westchester County, a bunch of counties in northern NJ and a county in Pennsylvania. Yet this index is often represented as a proxy for the Manhattan housing market by national news outlets. Manhattan residential sales have about a 1% market share of single family homes.

In other words, the CS index is a great academic tool to trend single family home prices at a 30,000 foot view for research but not to measure the current state of your local market.

Tags: Case-Shiller, S&P, CoreLogic, S&P/Case-Shiller 20-City index, Dow Jones, S&P/Case-Shiller National Index

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With any significant unexpected and historic event, the initial impact to housing can be seen in the form of a “pause” until buyers have enough time to process it. I first wrote about my “milestone” theory more than a decade ago. There was a New York Times cover story a month after Lehman collapsed in 2008 that used our data to mark such a milestone. A “pause” can be measured in days or months and market reaction can ultimately go against conventional wisdom.

Back in August of 2011, after S&P downgraded U.S. debt ratings, it was thought to be catastrophic to the U.S. economy yet the world’s investors flooded into U.S. treasuries for safety, pushing interest rates to the floor, ultimately giving a boost to housing.

I may not know much, but I do believe this: potential changes in government social policies should be kept separate from potential changes in economic policies, otherwise it is impossible to take action on anything in your life. This probably includes making decisions about whether to buy or sell a home. This U.S. election campaign has been brutal and at this point we don’t know how much of what was said about social policy will be enacted. This uncertainty may keep some buyers on the sidelines longer than others, but otherwise I’m not sure any of that matters to the housing market. On the margin, I am hearing that a few buyers have placed their purchases on hold. This is a normal reaction after a significant historic event but eventually many of those participants wade back into the pool when they are more comfortable.

Stock futures were down significantly overnight but the financial markets moved higher after initially falling. With a quickly rebounding stock market, I’m don’t think home buyers will take very long to decide whether to rejoin the housing market.

In addition, the odds of a December interest rate increase by the Federal Reserve dropped sharply despite yesterday’s view of a rate hike as nearly a sure thing. The president elect’s economic platform, which was not widely discussed during the campaign, proposes a large tax cut and investment in infrastructure which are either favorable or neutral to the housing market.

Before the election, the housing market was generally softest at the top over the 18 U.S. markets we cover. I believe inventory will continue to be more readily available at the higher end than for other segments. In New York, the slow down in sales was assumed to caused by the pull back of foreign buyers. However this decline was equally matched by domestic buyers over the same period, so the foreign buyer decline has been a false narrative. The sales share of international buyers has remained stable for for nearly 3 years. I am speaking at the The Real Deal conference in Shanghai next week and will look to understand sentiment towards further U.S. real estate investment.

Rather than the international buyer narrative, I attribute the New York sales slow down to the visceral view of new residential towers rising from empty lots. Construction lending nearly dried up at the beginning of the year so the pipeline will slow quite a bit over the next two years.

With world economies generally falling or remaining weaker than the U.S. economy and the continuation of near record low interest rates, I don’t see much impact from the U.S. election results after the short term jitters pass.

Of course, I was wrong about the election.

Tags: Donald Trump

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It’s hard to believe that thirty years have passed since my family and I began our Miller Samuel appraiser journey. Here’s a little bit about the experience which reminds me of that old joke about marriage:

“We’ve been married for 30 years and it only seemed like five minutes…under water.” (boom)

It all began in 1986 when my parents, wife, sister, former brother-in-law and I got the idea to form an appraisal company after we had actually raised a substantial amount of money to launch a real estate brokerage firm. My wife and sister were already appraisers. A lawyer that I sold a condo to in 1985 (yes, I was a real estate agent in NYC for a brief stint) found a group of Japanese investors willing to back us. When it came down to it, we just couldn’t sign on the dotted line because we didn’t want to become real estate brokers. Our family’s collective real estate background was mixed, including brokerage, appraisal, management, development, rentals, sales, but most importantly, a lot of analytics and a fascination with technology. We seemed to be different from our competitors, creating our own software (there was no appraisal software), going with the Mac as a platform over PC and collecting any data we could re-use. I remember that we were the first New York appraisal firm to have two fax machines, with a hunt and search two line setup, allowing us to give out only one fax number (LOL). We cold called banks and hand delivered our appraisal reports to better connect with our clients (Who had heard of email?)

It’s a leap of faith to start a new business and in our first month, we received two bank appraisals for a total of $600. Even with the high cost of three couples living in Manhattan, those two appraisal orders felt like $1 billion – and they remain best feeling of validation I ever experienced in my professional career. Within a few months of our launch, our volume snowballed and a year later we nearly tripled in size to 17 employees and lots of personnel challenges.

The October 1987 stock market crash caused appraisal volume to implode. We laid off more than half of the firm shortly thereafter and stuck with an 8-employee line up for the ensuing decade. From this experience we learned a valuable lesson – we were far more profitable with a smaller nimble firm that focused on quality over volume. In addition we were able to do what we loved rather than be mired in personnel issues. Manhattan was our turf and we loved and walked every inch of it.

By 1989, appraisal licensing came on the scene after the S&L crisis. While I had already taken appraisal courses, continuing education became a mandatory requirement for the upcoming licensing law. On a whim, I remember flying on a Trump Air helicopter from Manhattan to Atlantic City for $75 to take an appraisal course for my license – who knew appraising was so exciting? As a self proclaimed cool geek, I felt very out of place standing on the heliport near the Javitz Convention Center waiting with the Atlantic City heavy hitters wearing white polyester blazers, gold chains and white patent leather loafers, ready for a weekend of gambling.

The subsequent years brought us through a recession where the New York region was hit far harder than the rest of the country and distressed real estate was the next wave. Remember the division of the FDIC known as The Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC)? By 1990, 50% of our practice involved co-op foreclosures, a byproduct of the high velocity rental to co-op conversions and a tremendous amount of investor activity that overheated the market – eventually the music stops in any housing boom. Renters were flipping their insider rights to outsiders for their retirement nest eggs.

Other appraisal firms arose in the early to mid-1990s that pushed out many of the “out of area” firms with token representation in Manhattan. Indirectly, these large new competitors ended up being helpful to us as they worked very closely with mortgage brokers and were hyper focused on high volume. We were focused on quality and low to moderate volume. From the beginning, we had worked hard to reduce our dependence on mortgage related work. Mortgage brokers, who were paid only when the loan closed, got to pick the appraisers. That conflict of interest was always mind boggling to me. The mortgage brokerage industry generally did not pay for appraisal reports until they reviewed the value to confirm whether it was adequate to make the deal work. By that point the appraiser had been officially converted from valuation professional to deal enabler. We weren’t very popular with mortgage brokers since we required payment before we would release the value.

By the late 1990s the Dot-com boom was in full force and the irrational exuberance we experienced in the 1980s returned, carrying all the way through the housing bubble. Our firm did not fair very well during the bubble from 2003-2008 because we weren’t morally flexible to work in this new world where risk was assumed to be managed away so reckless behavior was the standard – conflict of interest was the standard. We saw appraiser competitors’ volume explode to the point where they dwarfed us in size. Their commissioned staff were able to do as many as 40 appraisals per week, which included taking the order information, making the appointment for the inspection, getting information from the managing agent, searching for comps, calling agents to confirm condition and other comp information, writing up the report and fixing edits from the reviewer, following up with calls after the client received the report, etc. I should mention that Manhattan still doesn’t have a traditional MLS and sales were not public record until 2006, 20 years after we began. Our firm was based on salaried staff to control quality and maintain professionalism but maxed out at about 8 appraisals per appraiser per week. I never understood the math for the high volume process unless virtually all quality corners were cut. Our appraisal staff is still salaried with benefits today. Back then, those types of “crank it out” firms thrived at the expense of the dwindling pool of ethical appraisers. It was a frustrating period in our history because we could have tripled our volume overnight if we sold our souls. We just couldn’t.

By 2005 it became apparent that the end of the bubble was coming and I still needed an effective way to get the word out – that something was wrong with the mortgage process – not that anyone would listen since they were making too much money. U.S. banks began closing their in-house review appraisal groups as “cost centers,” and loan officers began to call and demand higher values or cut us off and mortgage brokers were dominating the market even more. So I started blogging about it. I figured I had nothing to lose by going public. And thankfully the feedback came quickly. My first blog post on Matrix (I had start writing on my appraisal blog Soapbox the previous month and later merged them) was in the summer of 2005 based on an APM Marketplace radio interview. Later, CNBC came to my office to talk about “real estate’s dirty little secret”…where I said on national television that “75% of bank appraisals weren’t worth the paper they were written on.”

I knew we would be out of business in three years (by 2008) if we didn’t change our business model. So we fired all our national bank clients (before they could fire us) as they went to the appraisal management company model that essentially removed all local market knowledge from inhouse. The onslaught of dumb questions from AMCs made the decision easier (i.e. sample AMC review question: “What does a doorman do in a co-op or condo building?”) We proceeded to focus on the underserved private and legal work – our ability to adequate serve these clients had been hampered from the mind numbing clerical tasks that appraisers were required to do. And it worked! Our new focus on clients that actually wanted to know what the value was and were willing to pay a fair fee for paid off.

When Lehman collapsed in September 2008 almost simultaneously with the bailout of the GSEs and AIG, mortgage appraisal work nearly came to a halt. Thankfully we had already inverted our business model away from retail bank appraisal work in the prior year, around the time that Bear Stearns had collapsed. Our new business model was very contrarian to the state of the market. The change to our business and new revenue streams were inspiring and liberating. Our firm has experienced record sales nearly every year since 2008 but only because we have stayed away from retail mortgage appraisal work. Aside from the very low fees, AMCs that issued appraisal orders for banks kept expanding clerical requests to justify getting half of the appraisal fee. Since the Lehman moment, most of my competitors have gone under and most of the principals either no longer have their licenses or have left the business. Unfortunately for mortgage lenders (even though they don’t realize it) is that most of the “best” appraisers in each housing market have either left the business or moved on to more lucrative market rate work.

The false appraisal shortage narrative being perpetuated by the AMC industry is disturbing since it is really about the shortage of people willing to work for up to half the market rate. There is no shortage of appraisers. Over thirty years of measuring housing markets and valuing property has taught my firm that appraisers, like housing markets, are subject to supply and demand. The current mortgage lending environment is stuck with a solution that ignores that basic fact, so good firms like us move on to greener pastures. As a result, Miller Samuel is not looking to return to generic retail mortgage appraisal work anytime soon. That is a shame because we have 30 years of market experience to share with those banks to help them make informed lending decisions on their collateral.

As the incoming president of RAC, a group comprised of the best residential appraisers in the U.S., I observed that many of our members moved out of the mortgage appraisal business as we did to land higher quality work. This mass exodus of the best appraisers in each market presents an incredible loss to the collective knowledgebase of the mortgage lending industry. Perhaps because of the federal backstop employed at the “Lehman” moment in 2008, the mortgage industry still thinks they have risk management under control. They don’t.

Hopefully at some point in the not too distant future, regulators, taxpayers, government employees and other assorted stakeholders will come to realize that it is for the greater financial good of the taxpayer/consumer to have a mortgage appraisal industry exist that is:

• competent through education and mentoring
• allowed to provide a neutral opinion of value without fear of retribution
• adequately and fairly represented in the mortgage process

These elements do not currently exist. In order for the current disconnect between mortgage lending and collateral valuation to be fixed, it must be understood that:

• a real estate appraisal is not a commodity, nor is the appraiser
• real estate appraising is a professional service
• real estate appraisers are the most essential element of understanding collateral values in order to make informed lending decisions
• without adequate representation, appraisers will continue to be overrun with scope creep
• appraisers are subject to the laws of supply and demand like any industry
• cutting the pay of appraisers by half has an adverse impact on the reliability of the valuation result

It’s been quite a journey for our firm.

Miller Samuel is going to continue to do what it does best, provide neutral valuation opinions on collateral to enable our clients to make informed decisions.

And yes, these past thirty years have felt like holding our breath for five minutes underwater, but it was worth it.

Tags: Miller Samuel

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I really enjoyed my interview over at Yahoo! Finance this week discussing the release of the Elliman Report: Manhattan Sales 1Q 2016. Love their longer interview format.

Note the “two comma” reference taken from the HBO show Silicon Valley:

Miller also rejects the thesis that Manhattan’s two-comma real estate prices were being fueled solely by foreign money and are now jeopardized by global uncertainty and a stronger dollar versus emerging market currencies.

Additional insights on the report shared on the recent edition of Housing Notes. Sign up here.

Tags: Alexis Christoforous, Lawrence Lewitinn

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Hard to believe we’ve been around so long.

I personally feel about 29 years old (maturity of a 19 year old, obviously) yet after we published our Manhattan report today that cited 26 year record highs, the math places me a bit older than 29. My birthday was yesterday (I’m still milking that day for all I can) and our company’s birthday is today. We launched in 1986, working in our apartments and communicating via fax machines, buying Macintosh Plus computers, creating our own appraisal software, using bar code scanners, Scantron readers, tape measures, measuring wheels, sonic measuring devices, laser measuring devices and beepers. It’s been a surprisingly fun but difficult journey.

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A few days ago I published a critical piece on the appraisal industry for Bloomberg View called Guess What’s Holding Back Housing.

There are many great people, incredible talents and solid organizations within the appraisal profession. But in my opinion only 20% of the industry are truly competent professionals and the remainder are merely varying degrees of form fillers.

I have been an appraiser for 28 years and it is apparent that the industry is dying a death of a thousand knives. One of the key reasons for this slow death is the lack of national leadership and the extreme fragmentation since most appraisal shops are comprised of a single or just a handful of professionals. I’d also like to offer that the majority of our profession seem very willing to make unsupported negative inferences on reviews of a colleague’s work such as appraisal field reviews or troll columns like mine.

Like I said, 80% of the profession are really not professional. Many of these appraisers have not looked up from their clipboards in quite a while and take an objective look at the world around them.

I have found appraisers throughout my career to be hyper defensive about the quality of their own work (I am definitely one of them on occasion). Just ask any bank review appraiser what it was like to call an appraiser out on an unsupported analysis. And just ask any appraiser what it is like to get meaningless criticisms from a bank appraisal reviewer over nothing germane to the value opinion.

A few week’s ago a colleague sent me a link to the first empirical study on the impact of HVCC on the appraisal profession by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. The thrust of the study was the analysis of “low appraisals.”

When I used the term “low appraisals” in my piece combined with their editors choice of post titles: Guess What’s Holding Back Housing all bets were off.

It was “game on”, yet I’m in the appraisal trenches with all of them. The most amazing thing about the adverse reaction was that most of the appraisers who trolled the comment section or sent me scathing emails never read the Fed’s working paper on the analysis which was the basis of the post. The core of the working paper is only about 10 pages double spaced in length yet they were more willing to troll a colleague than undertake a professional debate.

I could chalk this unprofessional reaction to the battering our industry has taken over the past decade – I certainly feel that way – but it doesn’t explain everything. Because our industry has no real voice in related public policy, we continue to be marginalized by robotic institutional processes such as AMCs, AVMs and upper management that still sees our services as merely a cost center.

When I received the first email troll comment, I queried his email address and called him up right away. He was surprised that I found his phone number but we had a pleasant discussion. He was concerned that I would out him.

I exchanged emails with several of the email ranters and the replies were much more civil. I also did this with a few of the commenters on the post.

Although the majority of these responses are rambling rants, they shed some light on the state of the appraisal profession.

Take a look at a sample (I redacted their last names, firm names and contact info):

Hello Jonathan- I’ve heard good things about your firm and its work, so I am doubly shocked by the headline in your article “Guess What’s Holding Back Housing,” and the implication that somehow appraisers are to blame for the sluggish pace of the housing recovery. There’s no question mark at the end of the “Housing.” It’s not a question, but more of an accusation. You do know we’ve been through a severe recession, don’t you? That in spite of the increase in employment that has taken place we have created a lot of part-time jobs and done away with a lot of high-paying full-time jobs. Labor force participation is way down. You do know that lending standards have tightened? Are you aware of these facts? I ask that because your article conveys ZERO understanding of any of these fundamentals. The term “Low Appraisals” manages to be erroneous and stigmatizing at the same time. That an appraisal is “low” tells me nothing about the quality of the appraisal. It may be a great appraisal. It may be a terrible appraisal. It says nothing about whether the appraisal conforms to regulatory guidelines and industry standards and is a credible opinion of market value. I NEVER use that term when referring to an appraisal. I have dealt with many irate customers throughout the years and I always take the time to explain to people what an appraiser is supposed to do – which the general public frequently does not understand. The term “low appraisals” is also stigmatizing. If “low” appraisals are “holding back housing,” well that is not a good thing, is it? As a leader in an industry which is poorly understood by the general public, I am saddened that you would take the space granted to you to further the misconceptions people have about appraisers and what we do. It is NOT our job to “make” or “hit” a number. When we make that the job is when the problems start happening. You could have explained to Bloomberg’s readers that appraisers have to weigh an offer for a property in light of market evidence. If the evidence to support the sale price is not there, an appraiser is doing his or her job in NOT “hitting the number.” Your use of the “low appraisal” term suggests that the appraisal is somehow flawed. If the appraisal is flawed, it is not because it is “low” but because it does not incorporate appropriate data and/or analysis. In all my time in the appraisal industry I have always offered irate clients a change to point to specific, substantive errors or omissions in any appraisal when they do not agree with its findings. The overwhelming majority of the time the client, or broker, or other interested party has nothing to say. They are angry because the number is “too low.” They don’t know or care if the appraisal is well done or poorly done. All they care about is that it is “low.” I hope you will use your prominent position in the industry and your access to publications such as Bloomberg to speak the truth about what appraisers are do, not further misconceptions. Sincerely William

I called William directly and we spoke at length.

How can you, a highly recognized real estate appraiser, write an article for Bloomberg suggesting that appraisers are partially responsible for the weak housing market when the quality of the appraisal reports was not analyzed? How can anyone, or an agency make such a suggestion if the reports weren’t analyzed? I am a retired general real estate appraiser who reviewed many reports and to do so required a knowledge of the real estate market in which the report was prepared. In my own opinion, again without an analysis of any reports, it is more likely that the appraisers are better now and are NOT trying to hit the target as was the case prior to the 2006, 2007 blowup because they are under so much scrutiny from the lenders. For example, no more calling an average property “above average with no repairs necessary” when, in fact, the property has a few problems. The local appraiser group has shrunk as the worst ones are no longer in business, as is the case of many of the unscrupulous lenders who employed them.

My response to the above:

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for sending the note.

It’s actually quite easy to write about it. I disagree with your observations about today’s quality. It is very poor.

I have reviewed thousands of residential appraisals, been an expert in a number of national litigation cases and the quality right now is just as bad as it was during the boom, but different. The Fed study I referred to in the piece inferred a quality problem as a result of the metrics presented. Talented professionals like I’m sure you were are no longer entering the industry.

Yes the mortgage broker-orientated appraisers are largely gone now but the new generation of appraisers working for AMCs are just as bad, but in the opposite direction. Now we have an industry working for half the market rate who need to cut corners to be able to complete the report. With AMC’s it is much more common for the appraiser to be missing local market knowledge and to drive much farther to their assignment.

Mortgage appraisers today who work for AMCs tend to be biased low because they don’t know their market area cold which is just as bad as being biased high back during the boom.

I want our industry to provide a neutral well research product. The problem is the the clients don’t care and see us as a commodity rather than a profession.

Again, thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Thomas did not respond.

Jonathan, Summarized: Appraisers were responsible for the housing bust AND now for holding back progress in the housing market. Funny how that is……..that so many cover the above as truth and that few actually write about the actual purpose of the appraisal process. I suppose it would be harder to headline an article like that and draw readers in. I enjoyed this part in particular; “The quality of appraisal reports wasn’t analyzed, but the paper suggests that it may have declined.” I look forward to reading more. Sincerely, Adam

My response to Adam:

Hi Adam

Summarized: you need to drop the righteous indignation lathered in sarcasm approach. It’s not productive unless you are merely a troll.

Otherwise I assume you are an accomplished appraiser. Would you like to discuss this tomorrow? I’d really appreciate dissecting the disconnect.

Let me know.

Adam did not respond. The more sarcastic the commentary, the more afraid appraisers like Adam are to engage in reasonable discussion.

I don’t think you have all the correct information. For only a $400 to $500 fee an appraiser will make sure I don’t pay too much for a house. Nor pay the real estate agent a 7% commission which on a $500,000 home would be $35,000. Nor pay $300,000 in interest to a mortgage company. So are “low ball” appraisals really the problem? Or were “inflated values” the problem? Or is it that appraisers keep the other guy honest? Sorry sir, but I want to not get ripped off! Bobby

My reply:

Bobby

Thanks for the reply. On a bank appraisal, the appraiser’s client is the bank, not the borrower – a common misunderstanding.

We had a continuing dialogue.

I just read the article on Bloomberg View and I have to say, as a certified real estate appraiser, I am a little offended. I know the graphs and the statistics show that there has been an increase of real estate sales and refinances that are killed by the appraisal. I also agree that the HVCC and later the Dodd-Frank Act has increased the number of what are called “low appraisals”. I think the problem myself and many other appraisers have is even the often incorrect use of the phrase “low appraisal” itself. As in all professions there are always going to be the few that don’t do the job correctly or even those who falsely skew the results. The other 98% of the appraisers out there are just giving the honest truth, as we are required to by our ethics and the law. Most appraisers including myself have a great respect for the fact that we are there to protect the borrower and the lender, or the seller and the buyer in the case of a sale. I have read many articles in realtor or mortgage professional trade magazines and online blogs about these “low appraisals” and the bad “low ball appraisers”. The story often goes like this; A realtor Jane Doe describes how “bad, low appraisals” have killed 4 of her last 10 sales. She says the problem has gotten worse and she has been a realtor for 20 years and appraisal quality is at an all time low. The truth is that most agents, like appraisers are honest professionals who are doing a good job. The issue is their job is to get a buyer and seller to agree on a price… so that they get what they want and money can be made. They are advocates for “brokering” the deal and work on commission. There are few checks and balances in that system, it is self regulated by the free market, which is great… most of the time. What sometimes happens is this: The house for sale is a nice 2,000 sf, 3 bed 2 bath ranch home in Niceville Subdivision, the seller feels his house is worth at least $250,000 and the buyer loves the house and they feel that $240,000 is the highest they can pay. The house goes under contract for $240,000 and 2 agents and 2 clients are happy… for now. Then when the appraisal comes back at $225,000 everyone thinks it is a low appraisal, 2 agents, 2 clients, 1 loan officer, etc. all want the house to be worth the agreed upon $240,000. The problem is the appraiser is doing his job and found that out of 30 total sales in Niceville S/D, 8 of them are similar ranch style homes that are in “average” to “very good” condition selling between $190,000 and $220,000. Most of the ones that best match the size, condition, # of garages, amenities, etc. have sold for about $215,000 after + & – adjustments are made for differences. That is what is known as “The MOST PROBABLE PRICE a property will bring in a competitive and open market”, not the highest price “if you get lucky”, or the price you can get “if the buyers are from out of town and don’t know the local market”. The scope of work we agree to is just that, the most probable price. Lenders want to know that if the loan stops performing that they actually own something that is worth what they lent on it. If 90% of homes like the one in this case sell for $215,000 and I value it for $240,000 I have not done my job correctly. If the loan defaults 6 months later when the buyer losses his job and the bank loses money because they can’t find that rare buyer willing to pay too much, I have harmed them. If the buyer of that house gets relocated in 6 months and cannot sell it or has to take a loss when he realizes he can only get the usual $215,000, I have harmed him. The agents and loan officers that made the high commissions 6 months ago have nothing to fear, they did their job and got the deal done. The appraiser will be the one that will be getting the call from the attorneys. That is something that needs to be remembered. We are NOT paid on commission and our work is scrutinized by underwriters to test us constantly. It is in our best interest to do the right thing and value a property fairly, not too high or too low…. And that is what we do…. and get pressure in one direction or the other if values are going up or going down. That is why the average age appraiser is over 55 years old and few are joining the profession. Being a punching bag for doing the right thing gets old as fees go down gobbled up by the AMC’s that Cuomo forced on the industry as the cost of living, gas, business expenses, insurance, etc. goes up. P.S. Look at Cuomo’s involvement and gain, in creating a forced middleman in the modern appraisal industry. Regards, John

Thanks for your thoughtful reply John.

The phrase “low appraisal” was the metric selected by the Fed and the basis of the study. It strikes a nerve in appraisers and rightful so. They used it in a mechanical way versus the way NAR might complain that appraisers are killing their deals. Still, the appraisal quality of the industry is worse today compared to 10-20 years ago. Are there good appraisers out there? Of course. I am. You sound like you are. But the industry is dying and part of the reason, but not the entire reason, is us. We have no leadership and are simply being marginalized – the outcome in my opinion is a lower quality product that reduces the reliance on our industry.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.

John replied again with a very well articulated description of the state of the appraisal industry.

I agree that we need to do more. In Louisiana we are pretty good about regulating AMC’s and there is a requirement for them to pay C&R fees but many still don’t. I am sorry if I sounded rude in my first e-mail but as you know the low appraisal thing strikes a nerve with most of us. I would love to see a large powerful national organization that truly advocates for appraisers the way NAR does for realtors. That would be the real answer. Getting most of us in one organization I agree is the problem since we are lone wolves in many ways.

Tags: Trolls

38 Comments

It is hard to believe it has been nearly 9 years since I wrote my first blog post. Back then I was very frustrated with real estate world around me. The housing market was booming and my appraisal competitors were increasing their staff size by a multiple of 20 (they’re now essentially out of business). We weren’t part of the (fool’s) gold rush.

Apparently I had missed a key math and ethics class in school that would help me understand what was happening and why it was happening. Everyone seemingly was losing losing their minds – appraisers, consumers, banks, rating agencies, investment banks, investors – to a word – everyone. It didn’t help that national appraisal organizations, all of whose memberships had been dropping since appraisal licensing was introduced in 1991, did not understand or were not willing to speak out about the obvious problem. Appraisers were not allowed/not able to be a neutral valuation experts for lenders to make informed decisions on lending/risk of their collateral – lenders just didn’t care because they could off-load the risk to investors around the globe. The appraisal industry was converted nearly overnight to “deal enablers.”

I saw my career ending in 3 years if I didn’t do something. I did the only thing I could think of – start talking openly about the lack of independence the appraisal industry had at that time (amazingly, how little has changed in this regard). No appraisers I were aware of were speaking openly about the problem in 2004-2005 – our industry was living in constant fear of alienating their lender clients. Since I was losing lender clients to my rapidly growing competitors who were morally flexible, I really had nothing to lose.

My first blog post was a June 23, 2005 interview with Bob Moon at APM Marketplace in a segment called “Appraising the Appraisers” My industry was a symptom of a larger problem that eventually crushed the global economy – a credit crunch.

The original APM audio link is now broken but I have it here (I hope APM doesn’t mind).

It’s a time capsule and (I believe) worth a listen.

Tags: Bob Moon, APM Marketplace Radio, Radio

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Real estate reporter Katherine Clark at the New York Daily News got the scoop on the $70,000,000 penthouse sale at 960 Fifth Avenue, the highest price ever paid for a Manhattan co-op apartment. Curbed New York lays out all the (pretty?) pictures.

The previous record was held by David Geffen, who paid $54,000,000 in 2012 for the Penthouse at 785 Fifth Avenue. Although the Geffen penthouse was renovated, it was 12,000 square feet, more than twice as large as the 5,500 square feet within the penthouse at 960 Fifth Avenue – that just sold for a record price of $70M.

To further illustrate how much more expensive this new record price actually is, take a look at the two highest Manhattan co-op sales prices achieved, but on a price per square foot basis:

David Geffen paid $4,500 psf for the penthouse at 785 Fifth Avenue for the then record price of $54,000,000.

Nassef Sawiris paid $12,727 psf for the penthouse at 960 Fifth Avenue for the new record price of $70,000,000. On a sales price basis, the new record is 29.6% higher than the old record of 2 years ago.

On a price per square foot basis, the record sale was 182.8% above the previous record sale price set two years ago.

With all the attention focused on the newish or new development residential condo market, the all-time price per square foot apartment record was set 2 years ago, around the time of the Geffen purchase.  A Russian oligarch paid $88,000,000 for Sandy Weill’s penthouse condo that works out to $13,049 per square foot. That record breaking sale was largely viewed as a market outlier, that the buyer overpaid as part of a larger divorce strategy – since it was 31% higher than the previous record in the year prior within the same building.

Some other oddities about this new record co-op sale at 960 Fifth Avenue:

• The 960 Fifth Avenue co-op board is old world and I’ve heard it is fairly tough. As a general statement, it is not that common to see a foreign buyer at the high end of the market approved by a co-op board.
• The news coverage suggested the buyer was slow to pay his taxes and negotiated a reduced amount with the government. This would be a concern for most co-op boards in terms of collecting maintenance charges in arrears from a foreign national if they stopped paying.

Since these conditions would probably make any high end co-op board nervous, perhaps this is a sign that shareholders (board members are also shareholders) are concerned about damaging potential property values by limiting the universe of people that would be able to afford these types of prices in this new market condition.

Tags: Penthouse, Co-ops, Fifth Avenue, Egypt, Nassef Sawiris, 960 Fifth Avenue, 785 Fifth Avenue, David Geffen

1 Comment

With the $147M sale in East Hampton, NY, it has been a busy couple of weeks for the .0000000000000000001% of the home buying public in the US. With the 3rd US home sale to close above $100M in 2014, it has left many thinking – why isn’t NYC in the fray?

After all, NYC arguably legitimized the US “trophy sale” frenzy a few years ago when Sandy Weill sold his penthouse at 15 Central Park West to a Russian oligarch for double what he paid for it. I’ve argued that this $88M sale was the launchpad for the new trophy market in NYC even though the transaction appears to be a divorce strategy. After that sale closed, the subsequent trifecta of trophy sales back then seems relatively affordable now.

As journalists tell me…three data points make a trend.

2014 US Sales over $100M
$147,000,000 Further Lane, East Hampton, NY
$120,000,000 Copper Beech Farm, Greenwich, CT
$102,000,000 The Fleur de Lys, Los Angles, CA

So is the era of US $100M+ sales a trend?

Yes, although it is probably more accurate to call it a “phenomenon” than a trend.

In NYC? Eventually.

To a few real estate brokers I engaged with on this topic, the idea that NYC would see the $100m threshold broken in 2014 seemed inevitable, only because of this 2014 US trifecta. It is the belief that we are experiencing a momentum swing over the $100m threshold because 3 sales by May, compared to a sale a year means a shift.

Meh. I view this phenomenon as “product-specific” and not “location-specific.” There is a randomness to the locations where these sales occur. However I do believe the probability is high that NYC will see such a sale in the not too distant future.

Then again, does it really matter? Do these $100M+ sales have anything to do with the remainder of the US housing market? No they don’t. But it’s fun to talk about.

The Manhattan $1M Average Sales Price Threshold broken in 2007
I remember when the Manhattan $1M average sales price threshold was broken in 2007, foreign media went gaga, struggling to find a deeper meaning to housing. There wasn’t. I always viewed it as simply a number on the spectrum.

Affordable Irony
Definitive proof that I have “hipster” tendencies – my never ending search for irony.

Yesterday’s announcement of the 3rd US $100m+ sale was one of record breaking irony: the announcement of NYC mayor’s 10-year plan to create 200k affordable housing units. The need for affordable housing – low and middle income – has always challenged NYC. The mayor’s affordable housing plan “moon shot” as the New York Times has described it came out on the same day as the $147M East Hampton sale story broke. Irony.

Tags: trifecta, US, East Hamptons, Los Angeles, Greenwich CT, Mayor Bill de Blasio

2 Comments

The OCC and an alphabet soup of 5 additional regulators: FDIC, CFPB, FHFA, NCUA and the Federal Reserve issued a joint press release that if adopted, takes a small step forward in the regulation of appraisal management companies, who are largely responsible for the collapse of valuation quality since the credit crunch began.

To many, this action is long overdue. Appraisal management companies control the vast majority all mortgage appraisals in the US, having been legitimized by HVCC back in May 2009. I’ve burned a lot of calories over the past several years pointing out the problems with the AMC industry so admittedly it is nice to see them getting attention. The fact that these institutions are not licensed to do business at a statewide level but the appraisers who provide the valuation expertise they manage is inconsistent at best.

Still, the recognition of this regulatory glitch probably won’t have a significant impact on appraisal quality provided by AMCs. As my friend Joe Palumbo maintains, is like fool’s gold.

I think proposal is at least a starting point.

A couple of highlights – regulators would:

• Require that appraisals comply with the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (today we had a clerical AMC staffer tell us that writing out the math calculations on the floor plan was a requirement of USPAP).
• Ensure selection of a competent and independent appraiser. (It is unbelievable to think this is necessary but it does make the legal exposure a little larger for AMCs.)

Housingwire has a good recap of the proposed regulations and so does the Wall Street Journal provides a nice overview (I gave them background for the piece).

The proposal by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Reserve and other regulators mandates that appraisal-management companies hired by federally regulated banks use only state-licensed appraisers with “the requisite education, expertise, and experience necessary” to complete appraisals competently.

Moral hazard There is no significant financial incentive for lenders to stop accepting the generally poor quality appraisals the AMC industry presents them daily. The hope is that the additional regulatory largess the AMCs have to confront will force the issue with lenders simply because the AMCs will have to raise their fees. Without a real “value-add” to the banks other than cost control and fast turn times, the lack of quality for a large swath of AMCs may no longer be overlooked by banks. Yes I can dream.

Residential appraisers, mostly 1-2 person shops, have largely been left without a voice and the bigger financial institutions have lobbied financial reform overtop of us without the regulators truly understanding what our role should to be to protect the taxpayer from excessive risk.

Anumber of smart appraisers I know have created a petition whose sole purpose is the get the attention of the CSFB to address the issue of “customary and reasonable” fees. Our industry has no other way to reach the regulators or the ability to lobby our views in Washington. I hope they are listening.

Tags: FHFA, Appraisal Management Companies, FDIC, AMC, Petition, OCC, CFPB, NCUA, Press Release

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…a new web site.

I haven’t posted to Matrix in over a month, by far my longest gap since I launched this in the summer of 2005. I love blogging, but technical problems have taken some of the fun out of it.

It goes like this. A little over a year ago I was looking to upgrade our web site millersamuel.com after a 10+ year run without a change. I also wanted to create a subscription service to make a lot more metrics available as well as consolidate other sites I had like the one for my podcast: The Housing Helix.

I was looking around for a web developer since the friends who built my old site had moved on to other full time jobs and didn’t have the time to commit to it. Taking in all the feedback from friends and colleagues I interviewed several candidates and went with a husband/wife consulting firm that had worked on sites for large companies including my friend’s firm. Their pricing was similar to the others I interviewed but I went with them because my friend highly recommended them.

Wow, I made an insanely big mistake.

Within a month after we began development, the practical cost to build the site appeared to quadruple (conservatively) what was agreed to. It was clear they were more interested in paying their developers first before worrying about creating what I had asked for.

The development process was like playing “telephone.” I wrote and mocked up my specs and gave it to the consultants. They told the designer and the designer created something disconnected from what I asked for. So I would view the new design and request all the changes so it reflected my branding, messaging etc. that had been covered in countless meetings and conversations. They would convey to the designer who would send me a link. They didn’t make most of the changes I had requested and usually went off in a different direction. After 15+ rounds of this for the home page alone, I would get a bill at 4x what it should have cost because the consultants couldn’t convey to the designer what I wanted yet I had to pay their vendors who charged me for it.

Question: If went into a Starbucks and ordered a drink but got the wrong one because the Barista wasn’t very good (theoretical only) at their job, would Starbucks charge me for 2 drinks because they had to remake it correctly? What if they did that 15 times??!!!

It became obvious that they didn’t have the technical skills to create the site so I fired them (in hindsight – waaaay too late) and asked my developer friend with the new full time job to cobble the site together so it could function – despite an awful internal structure, lots and lots of notes in Russian and useless code (as I found out later).

Suggestion to consultants once they get fired: Don’t send the client an email asking them to outline in writing all the problems that lead to the firing so they can fix the problem because they take the failure very seriously. As a client I had already been forced to request the same fixes over and over and over so I found it ridiculous that I had to explain yet one more thing. I didn’t.

We got super busy at Miller Samuel so I sat on a new web site design for a year, still stewing about how badly I was burned.

Somehow I happened to stumble into a great web developer and work is well underway on a new site. I consider myself lucky. These people are nice, but unlike my previous experience, I interact directly with the designer, programmer, tech person etc. through the Basecamp platform and can see progress evolving.

Now simply take my experience and do a “Find and Replace” on all instances of the word “consultant(s)”. Replace it with “appraiser”, “real estate agent”, “real estate broker”, “contractor” or “house painter” and it makes sense. Just because a friend or neighbor recommends someone for a service, don’t be blinded by it. Still do your homework and check into their abilities. I’ve learned that even personal referrals can be hit or miss (and expensive).

While I’m not updating my Matrix blog content until the new site is installed, I’ll soon be flooding all your feeds with housing insights in the new year (so rest up).

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