Tag Archives: chief appraiser

APPRAISER SELECTION PROCESS

NOVEMBER 26, 2023 – I received the following question from a staff appraiser with a bank. My answer follows his email.
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I am looking for direction/clarification on the regulations that discuss how an appraiser should be selected (specifically for commercial FRT’s). I work in the appraisal department of a bank and I need to prepare some internal policies/procedures/discussions on selecting an appraiser to engage. Many lenders feel they should be provided three choices and allow them or their customers to select the appraiser based on the lowest fee or the quickest turn time for the appraisal. They think that all that should be done is to not disclose the appraiser names and everything will be okay. However, my interpretation is that the appraiser should be selected based on their experience with the property type and the location in which the property is located. The regulations never appear to be direct enough, or all in one document to show how allowing lenders or borrower to participate in the selection would be viewed by bank examiners and regulatory agencies.
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We start with the following requirement from the 2010 Interagency Appraisal and Evaluation Guidelines (IAEG):

An institution’s selection process should ensure that a qualified, competent and
independent person is selected to perform a valuation assignment. An institution should
maintain documentation to demonstrate that the appraiser or person performing an evaluation is competent, independent, and has the relevant experience and knowledge for the market, location, and type of real property being valued. Further, the person who selects or oversees the selection of appraisers or persons providing evaluation services should be independent from the loan production area.

The other pertinent quote follows:

Moreover, the Guidelines stress that an institution should not select a valuation method or tool solely because it provides the highest value, the lowest cost, or the fastest response or
turnaround time.

Besides independence, the next most important item is to select an appraiser (or evaluator) that is competent in regard to the property type and subject market. That much is a given. There is no gray area.

So, the question becomes how can we BOTH select a competent appraiser AND allow the loan officer (and usually the borrower) to select from among several fee quotes?

Financial institutions accomplish this by bidding assignments to a group of competent appraisers. For example, the subject is a basic 5,000 SF, owner-occupied warehouse in a city of 100,000 people. It is likely the financial institution has 3 or 5 or more appraisers on their approved list that are competent to appraise this property in this market. So, we send out an RFP to three appraisers. All are equally competent to perform this assignment. We get the following bids:

Appraiser A – $2,500 / 3 Weeks

Appraiser B – $3,000 / 2 Weeks

Appraiser C – $2,000 / 4 Weeks

Over the past 3 decades, 95%+ of the banks and credit unions I have worked with forward the quotes exactly as shown above to the loan officer. The key is to not disclose the appraiser names. Borrowers and loan officers cannot suggest appraisers to use or not use. But, examiners and regulators are ok with them choosing from the anonymous quotes shown above.

Have we met the requirement of engaging a competent appraiser? Yes.

Have we helped the loan officer (and borrower) have enough information to make a time and price decision? Yes.

Are the examiners and regulators ok with this process? In my 30+ years of being involved in the appraisal process with financial institutions, I have not heard of a single objection.

There are two keys to making this acceptable:

  1. You can show that you only bid the assignment to competent appraisers; and,
  2. You do not disclose the appraiser names when sharing the bid information with the loan officer.

Maybe you are asking what the other 5% of financial institutions do. It may be less than that actually. This small group includes how I did things when I was Chief Appraiser. The appraisal department selected the best bid to go with. When requesting an appraisal to be ordered, the loan officer would let us know if time or cost was more important. This method speeds up the process and also allows us to spread the work around to the approved appraisers. The appraisal time is delayed when the loan officer/borrower make the selection. I have seen delays of weeks or longer. Also, through the blind selection process one appraiser may get too many assignments at once. Some appraisers have a habit of always bidding low and quick, even when swamped with work and knowing they cannot meet their deadlines.

As usual, feel free to send me follow-up questions. Or suggestions to add to this post or clarify something I said. My email is GeorgeRMann@Aol.Com.

The Mann


AN INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF YOUR BANK REVIEWS

August 8, 2016 – I attended the Appraisal Institute’s national conference in Charlotte, NC a few weeks ago.  One of the sessions was about compliance and a topic was called ‘Quality Assurance Reviews – Review of the Review.’

I believe I may have performed the first ever independent review of a bank’s staff reviews back in 2014.  In March, 2015, The RMA Journal published my article on the topic.  It is titled ‘What’s New In Appraisal Review’ and you can get to it on the Articles page of this web site.  (NOTE:  I call these Quality Control Audits (QCAs), but the task is the same regardless of the name.)

One of the slides at the AI session said ‘In layman’s terms, a Real Estate Assurance Review is a third party review, performed by a reviewer not tied to the institution’s review department, of an institution’s reviewer’s review of a real estate appraisal.  This type of external review allows for a variety of credibility checks for the institution, as well as for the governmental banking regulation authorities.’

One of the slides asks the questions ‘How can my institution justify the additional cost?’  In my Chief Appraiser days at two $100+ Billion institutions this question was presented more than once a year by senior management.  How can we recover the expense of the appraisal department?  How can we get borrowers to pay the internal review fee your department is charging the lending groups?

I can see all of the Chief Appraisers reading this and nodding their head and saying yep I do this ever darn year!  As I tried to explain to senior management, the appraisal department can pay for itself many times over by saving the bank a single large loan loss.  e.g. I remember one of my reviewers finding a $4 million error in an ARGUS cash flow.  That paid for the cost of my department for 4 years right there.  And I am sure my staff found many more errors that saved the bank millions of dollars.

In one of my Quality Control Audits for a regional bank, I found a single appraisal report that was approved by the reviewer, but had a $10 million error in it!  I found many other overlooked errors in the millions of dollars.  The cost of a QCA/QAR is nominal in comparison to not doing one.

It is not just about approving erroneous appraisal values.  A QCA/QAR is also about seeing if your internal policies and procedures are being followed.  If they aren’t, you will have a lot of fun answering to bank examiners and internal audit about why not.  Read my RMA Journal article to see the common issues I encounter.

You can try to do this internally.  But, you likely lack the resources.  My experience is it takes 10-12 hours per review – remember, you have to review the review AND the appraisal report.  Only then can you know if the reviewer missed anything.

Not many of us ever have enough staff to just do our day jobs.  Much less try to now perform reviews of reviews.  Outsourcing this task is the way to go.  Also, it provides an independent view of your staff.

Let me answer two questions I often get asked.  Yes, a QCA/QAR can be performed remotely.  This reduces the cost.  No, every review does not need to be checked.  A well-thought out sampling should let you know if there are any areas of concern.

Lastly, this does not apply to just banks/credit unions with internal review staff.  This applies to financial institutions that use Appraisal Management Companies (AMCs).  It would be prudent to know in advance of your next bank examination or internal audit if your appraisal review process is going to get high marks or has issues you can start addressing asap.

My focus is commercial real estate, so the above is mainly about that.  I am sure there are many advanced ways of addressing the quality of residential appraisal reports and residential reviews.

Please contact me if you are in need of a QCA/QAR!

 

Fifth Third Bank Settles False Claims Act Case for $84.9 Million

PHILADELPHIA, PA, October 6, 2015 — The United States Department of Justice announced today that Fifth Third Bank will pay approximately $85 million to the federal government to settle claims under the False Claims Act (“FCA”) relating to the Bank’s practices in connection with loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).  The settlement also resolves a whistleblower lawsuit filed by Kenney & McCafferty in June, 2011 in the Southern District of New York.

Kenney & McCafferty filed the whistleblower complaint on behalf of a former chief appraiser at the Bank, who alleged a broad range of commercial and residential mortgage violations, including fraudulent appraisal practices, which resulted in significant losses to the federal government. The lawsuit was filed under the qui tam, or whistleblower, provisions of the False Claims Act.  These provisions permit private parties to sue on behalf of the United States when they believe an individual or company has submitted false claims for government funds.

Fraud on the government’s mortgage programs has become a major source of False Claims Act recoveries in the wake of the mortgage crisis, and the Fifth Third settlement marks another significant victory for both the government and the taxpayers in this line of cases.  According to George Mann, the former Fifth Third employee who blew the whistle, “the culture of the Bank at that time emphasized profits over compliance with federal regulations.  This type of behavior is exactly what led to the financial crisis and, no matter what the outcome, I felt it was my responsibility to speak up and do the right thing.”

“We were fortunate to represent Mr. Mann in this case.  He is honest, ethical, and informed, and was willing to step forward under difficult circumstances,” said Kathryn Schilling, a whistleblower attorney at Kenney & McCafferty.  “Mr. Mann raised concerns about Fifth Third’s compliance issues internally, but no one listened to him.  He is thrilled that the government has recouped significant funds from Fifth Third to restore taxpayer dollars,” Ms. Schilling said.

Mr. Mann and his attorneys expressed great appreciation for the work of the Department of Justice, and the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, particularly Assistant US Attorneys Pierre Armand and Jaimie Nawaday.  Mr. Mann also thanked his family, friends, former colleagues who supported his compliance efforts at Fifth Third, his co-relator John Ferguson, and the law firm of Kenney & McCafferty.

For inquiries, please contact:

Kenney & McCafferty, P.C.

Kathryn Schilling

(215) 367-4333

kschilling@kenneymccafferty.com