With the recent slow down in business, my Associates and I have been busying ourselves with organizing, bill collecting, brushing up our resumes, continuing education classes and in my fellow Appraiser's case, once again attempting to clear his name from a Lender's ‘Blacklist' -
For those of you fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with Blacklisting, a Lender can do this to an Appraiser for no valid reason whatsoever. So far, I have remained off any Exclusionary Lender List... that I know of... But sometimes it is not until an Appraiser attempts to send an assignment through a broker that they find out, they too have been Blacklisted. I have known of Appraiser's who were Blacklisted because an Underwriter had a personal beef with them, or for ‘coming in under-value' too often (which may have been just once), or for reasons that are never discovered by the Appraiser as the Lender does not have to divulge why they are no longer on their Approved list.
My friend's Blacklisting incident happened in 2004. He has tried several attempts of communication with the company with no avail. His latest attempt was a six page letter that took him over 3 hours to write (I'm sure most of the time was spent trying rewrite the emotion out of the letter and I must say, he did a good job of it). H e has yet to receive any correspondence back from the company. Neither of us believe this letter will be answered. Hopefully it was at least a bit therapeutic for him...
The reason for this particular Blacklisting incident? The Appraiser's honesty got him in trouble. The home owner (and borrower) was refinancing his house with the same Lender. It was a cash-out refinance, which he seemed to ‘bank on' whenever there was enough equity to squeeze out of this poor house. At least two other Appraiser's had ignored the fact that there were no windows on one side of the structure (yes, the house had been opened to the elements for some time) and had listed the house in ‘average condition' with no mention of any issues and sent in the report. Unacceptable.
With the lack of windows in addition to a couple of other deficiencies, my fellow Appraiser entered a Cost-to-cure statement into the report. This prompted a Review Appraisal by another source who added one more issue into the Cost-to-cure statement... a lack of paint on the garage and shop.
The two reason's given for the Blacklisting?
•Ø The original appraisal did not specifically itemize the $7,500 in repairs.
•Ø The original appraisal did not accurately address the fair to poor condition of the exterior of the subject garage & shop building.
As an Associate to this Appraiser, I've seen the original report and it did mention a ‘Cost-to-cure' of $7,500, but did not itemize what was to be allocated to the windows and what to other miscellaneous repairs.
The picture on this page is that of the ‘shop' (which was more like a studio) with no indication of missing paint. 
This picture was added to his letter as well.
If this Appraiser had listed none of the issues of the subject property, this report undoubtedly would have flown through the system and more money given out to a house that may have a 30-40 year effective age. I would think that a Lender would be quite relieved that they could get out of a loan (if the owner were to refinance elsewhere) once these issues were brought to light. Now I'm just confused as to what they are thinking. This company has Blacklisted a fourteen year veteran of the Appraisal industry. He is lucky... this is his first Blacklisting. I figure regardless of how honest or compliant you are as an Appraiser, you too will be Blacklisted at some point in your career. Best of luck to us all.
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