GUEST POST: David Burns is a 43 year old State Certified Residential Appraiser. He has been appraising for almost 13 years in a family business with siblings that are also appraisers. David is passionate about fighting for the integrity and independence of the appraisal industry.
It appears as though the Federal Reserve is not going to offer any short term help in giving us our much sought after clarification on Customary and Reasonable (C & R) fees. The AMCs are spouting out word for word the "First Presumption of Compliance" when challenged on fees and appraisers are still being offered pathetic crumbs from the middle man.
My mother always told me to look for the silver lining in every dark cloud, and I think I have found it. The Loophole is our salvation!!! Both presumptions are not safe harbors and can be challenged.
"Both of the two presumptions of compliance are rebuttable. The presumption may be rebutted with evidence that the amount of compensation paid to a fee appraiser was not customary and reasonable for reasons that are unrelated to the conditions for the presumption. How this will be done remains to be seen. If a presumption relied upon is successfully rebutted, this means that the customariness and reasonableness of the compensation is determined based on all of the facts and circumstances (i.e., without a presumption of compliance or violation)" - Source
As written, Presumption One, with the loophole is the weaker of the two. Therefore, any AMC going with Presumption One is putting themselves in serious danger of significant fines. $10,000 a day per offense could wipe out the smaller AMCs very easily. The larger ones would either suffer massive multi-million dollar fines or step up and follow the laws the way they were intended.
Let’s work with the loophole and report every incident (every file) to the authorities. Do it now, do it today!
- Report them to the Attorney General of the state in which they are located and the state they are operating in.
- Report them to the Federal Trade Commission.
- You can even file an online complaint with the Federal Reserve and they will forward your complaint to the appropriate agencies.
- Report them to the BBB.
- Report them, report them, and report them.
It is only my speculation, but I think The Federal Reserve expected the AMCs to continue behaving unscrupulously and decided to give them enough rope to hang themselves. The laws were written with $10,000 a day fines for AMCs for a reason. Now we as appraisers, at last have the power to report the AMCs, and leave them dangling from a loophole at the end of a hangman’s noose.
http://www.naag.org/current-attorneys-general.php
Federal Trade Commission Consumer Response Center Room H-240 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D. C. 20580 Website: www.ftc.gov (use the File a Complaint link)
Office of Thrift Supervision Consumer Response Center 1700 G Street, NW Washington, DC 20552 Email: [email protected] Website: www.ots.treas.gov
GUEST POST: David Burns is a 43 year old State Certified Residential Appraiser. He has been appraising for almost 13 years in a family business with siblings that are also appraisers. David is passionate about fighting for the integrity and independence of the appraisal industry.
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