This Missouri appraiser feels tired and worn down from real estate agents, loan production staff and recently underwriters telling him to look the other way on FHA concerns. HUD wrote a code for various things to be checked, I am not a building inspector, and I certainly do not wish to perform home inspections. Just a few things have to be in order. In previous blogs, I have summarized the FHA observation. Any appraiser in Missouri has long understood that no house is a perfect structure with all million parts in perfect order.
I as a professional that performed a significant number of appraisal reports for B & C mortgage loans for many years know and greatly understand a little missing paint is not usually a significant life and death issue. I understand that most people can easily climb three or four big foot steps, I get it when people shove thirty years worth of family keepsakes in the closet that has the only attic entry. Nobody understands better than me that no kids will ever play with an old single man's garage door. Unfortunately, I did not make the rules, and no FHA appraiser has the authority to overide any of the HUD's guidelines.
The guidelines are not overly strict. Some of the most common concerns are mentioned in FHA Property Guidelines Are Not Understood by Many Mortgage Originators! Please understand that many of the REO properties (foreclosed homes,) short sale homes and other severly distressed sales might not meet the FHA property standards when you view them. Conventional financing is a little less strict minimum property standands and perhaps agreements can be made for a buyer to perform some repair/modifications on a home before sale so financing can be completed.
This is a new market with many things that were not common just a couple of years ago. FHA financing was only a small portion of overall mortgages, REO sales were a smaller portion of the overall home stock, Conventional mortgages were more available than before. Just because mortgage financing worked in a certain for somebody else or even you in the past, does not mean today's climate will work the same.
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