Hi Alan, Sometimes it takes a while for me to get adjusted to changes.  I didn't see anything wrong with the way it was.  But...life is always changing so real estate does also.

Kay, Here at Bank of America, we have our own appraisers.  I was going to throw something into the post about that but I ran out of time.  Appraisers are held accountable to a pretty high standard here. I wonder what we will do with them.

Anyway, I hear calls trying to get appraisals raised.  It almost takes an act of God to get them raised with a lot of comps to justify any change.  But, if there was not ethics, the accountability, and you were able to get your appraisers to adjust the appraisal accordingly, now you are making loans without the appropriate collateral.  In this case, investors are hurt, the GSEs, etc.  You would be selling a product to the GSEs/investors which was not as promised. 

Alan - please join and post this to our mortgage fraud group at http://activerain.com/groups/fraud. If we can get Realtors, lenders, appraisers and title and escrow people all on the same page as far as these issues, we can make a real dent in the problem. If we can extend that to educating the pubic we might actually eliminate mortgage fraud (well, except for the terminally grifty and the greedheads).

Hey Gene,

Whats the issue or are you some "code pink" fruit cake obsessed with something that ain't broke?  Nothing wrong with the the old rules, and the idea of Government Hacks trying to regulate something they dont understand will be disastrous.  

Just another case of another Dopy NY Bureaucrat " CUMO "trying to make a statement to get re-elected.  WOnder how much NY taxpayer money that idiot spent on this??

There is a slew of potential problems associated with this.  I agree there needs to be more done to prevent mtg fraud.  I agree with some of the steps taken.  There is a train that is pulling out of the station and Im not sure it knows exactly where it is going.  It appears the process was started by lenders providing financing to some people who were not qualified and bad appraisals were only a part of it.  There has been review processes in place for years but a period of time where due to competition among lenders this was not used in many cases.