Oh, the shock! The horror! 90% of appraisers pressured to raise property valuations by corrupt REIC

More on a corrupt and unregulated system, one that will now crash the world economy. Seriously. The Great Unwinding was preventable, yet so predictable. Corruption, bribery and an out of control REIC will be to blame my friends. There should be no surprises from here on out.

Bribing or pressuring an appraiser should be a felony, 5 years in prison for the first time offense. And all appraisers should complete mandatory training and testing, and be employed by the federal government. The game is up. The crash will be the catalyst.

Appraisers Under Pressure To Inflate Values

With home prices softening and sales volume sagging in many local markets, real estate appraisers say that pressure on them to inflate values has reached pandemic proportions.

A new survey of the national appraisal industry found that 90 percent of appraisers reported that mortgage brokers, real estate agents, lenders and even consumers have put pressure on them to raise property valuations to enable deals to go through. That percentage is up sharply from a parallel survey conducted in 2003, when 55 percent of appraisers reported attempts to influence their findings and 45 percent reported "never." Now the latter category is down to just 10 percent.

"You've got a situation where sales are down so everybody in the deal needs it to go through" at the contract price -- the mortgage broker, the real estate agent, the lender and the sellers, said Alan Hummel, senior vice president of Forsythe Appraisals of St. Paul, Minn., one of the largest property valuation firms in the country with 40 offices and 190 licensed appraisers. Forsythe was a co-sponsor of the new study.

Loan brokers are now routinely "dialing for values," Hummel said. "They call up appraisers and say, we've got this sale at $335,000 at such and such an address. Can you get to that number?" If an appraiser answers yes, he or she gets the assignment. If not, the appraiser is bypassed.

Worse yet, Hummel said, when an appraiser comes back with a market value estimate that is lower than the sales contract price, the appraiser may not get paid for the work, and may be blackballed by the mortgage broker or real estate agent.

Forbes Flash: Housing Crash Over - Everyone Rush to Buy More Homes and REIC Stocks! Hurry!

I. Can't. Believe. What. I'm. Reading.

Oh. Dear. God.

It's like REIC aliens have taken over this poor writer's body and brain. Maybe a nice big under-the-table check from the NAR? What a fantastic piece by Forbes. I wonder when they'll fire the writer and editor responsible for this doozy.

Housing Boom!

Forbes

Kenneth L. Fisher

Don't buy it. For months now the debate has been over whether America will have a hard landing or soft landing, the answer hinging on how big 2007's housing disaster turns out to be. Well, there won't be any housing disaster.

We won't have a landing at all, soft or hard. Right now the U.S. and global economies are both accelerating.

You can see right through the housing crash story by looking at the prices of housing stocks. The market knows what the economic worrywarts do not, which is that the housing sector is already making a comeback. In the last six months housing stocks are up 24%, well ahead of the overall market. If housing were destined to fall apart in 2007 these stocks wouldn't be so strong now.

Did you know that housing sales are up in the last few months, not down, and that inventories are lower than six months ago? We're accelerating, not landing. This is true not just in housing but also pretty much across the board.