Quick anecdote No. 1. One of my younger son’s long time time friends have a brother who is a mortgage broker. He’s was making pretty good money at it, had bought the big car and some toys and such. Just a couple months ago he was talking about the new house they were buying.
But now the bottom’s fallen out for them. They’re not only NOT following through with the purchase of the house, but they’re moving in this week with the brother because they’re broke. It seems their credit cards are too maxed to even stay in their rental.
Quick anecdote No. 2. A couple months ago I was reviewing an appraisal for one of my clients on a single family res in E. Vista. The appraisal was pretty bad and I ended up disagreeing with the value conclusion by over $100,000, which basically means rejecting it. That property is now currently listed as a bank-owned foreclosure. Had we not caught the funky appraisal that borrower might have bought themselves a little time at my client’s expense.
Quick anecdote No. 3. That same client, one of a nation’s largest banks, maintains a do-not-accept list of appraisers their QC department has identified as untrustworthy. That list is growing quickly as more and more appraisers attempt to maintain their volumes in the face of a declining market.
These are all the same indicators I saw the last time we went through this. Maybe it’s just my own biases, but it seems like the main difference is how quickly it’s progressing this time.
