RGA — PR & Marketing Communications

FNC launches new blog

Written by Rick Grant on November 22nd, 2009

The Collateral Vision is the name of Oxford, Miss.-based FNC’s new blog, which promises to offer “musings about the mortgage industry” but will likely focus on collateral valuation issues, an area the company has demonstrated a particular expertise in over the years. The company should have plenty to talk about. It’s technology is widely used to help lenders and property valuation providers manage collateral valuation work and it’s led by Bill Rayburn, a leading industry speaker and thought leader who has never backed away from a hot issue.

This is excellent timing for a new blog in the space. This year saw the Home Valuation Code of Conduct shake up the business and the reverberations are still working their way through the industry. Next year promises to be another difficult year for appraisers as they work to remain competitive, while being pushed further from the loan originators who rely on their work. Appraisal Management Companies are hot to take up the slack, but contention between AMCs and appraisers is causing sparks.

It appears that FNC will be entering the fray. In an early post, Robert Dorsey, Chief Data and Analytics Officer and co-founder of the company, writes that the company is hearing from mortgage originators that they are receiving appraisals from appraisers who are operating outside their regions of competence.

“The downturn in the housing market has caused a major disruption in the appraisal process. New regulations and downsizing by the lenders has resulted in many lenders using larger appraisal firms or vendor management companies and relying on them to send the best appraiser to the property. This is not always happening. Appraisers are being assigned to properties without regard to their knowledge of the neighborhood, and the result is that values are being returned that don’t accurately reflect the market value of the property.”

This is troubling, if what FNC is hearing on the street is actually happening. But a press release issued earlier this month by the Title/Appraisal Vendor Management Association raises some doubt.

“The typical driving distance traveled by independent appraisers, retained by the nation’s largest appraisal management companies (AMCs), averages 13 miles in urban and suburban areas this year, according to a new survey conducted by the Title Appraisal Vendor Management Association (TAVMA).”

It seems realistic to assume that if the appraiser is only driving 13 miles from a central location, there is a good chance they should be competent to handle the work.

TAVMA’s information relates only to appraisers hired by AMCs and it is possible that lenders who don’t work with AMCs, now grappling with a job that was formerly handled for them by mortgage brokers, are having trouble getting their orders routed to the right appraisers. FNC says its technology can solve the problem by using geocoding to track properties appraisers that use its system have worked on in the past, creating a method that lenders can use to assign work closer to the appraiser’s area of expertise.

We expect more of these problems to crop up next year and have already subscribed to FNC’s new blog to help us track this part of the industry.

Disclosure: RGA offers communications support to TAVMA and its executive director, Jeff Schurman. The organization retains another agency to handle certain public relations duties, including the press release referenced in this blog post.