As everyone in the business knows, there is a stigma regarding the relationship between appraisers and AMCs. Change can be difficult but appraisers are hard at work adapting and learning to accommodate a changing landscape that includes AMCs. New to the catalog of webinars that Allterra Online offers is a ‘how to’ guide on developing a positive and successful working relationship with AMCs. Joining us today for a preview into his webinar, How to successfully do business with AMCs, is Tony Pistilli, Chief Appraiser at Xome.
Buzz: Firstly, Tony, tell us how you got started in the business?
Pistilli: I got into the appraisal business quite by accident. I started at the department of Housing & Urban Development in a temporary position in the Valuation Branch in the Minneapolis field office. I liked it and worked in the industry for the next 25 years as a staff appraiser, independent fee appraiser, chief appraiser at a national bank and now as chief appraiser for a large AMC.
Buzz: You recently did a webinar with Allterra Online, what was its focus?
Pistilli: The webinar focuses on how to successfully work with AMC’s and it explores ways to identify “good” AMC’s. It also presents ways to successfully grow an appraisers business and income while working with AMC’s. Attendees of the webinar will discover some of the best practices they need to employ to be at the top of the list when AMC’s select appraisers.
Buzz: What do you think is most important for an Appraiser to remember while working with AMCs?
Pistilli: I believe appraisers wouldn’t mind who provides them appraisal assignments if they were treated professionally, paid fairly and in return were expected to return a high quality, USPAP compliant report. Finding AMC’s to work with that share that philosophy is the key to being a successful appraiser. This webinar will show appraisers how to weed through the multitude of AMC’s and find ones they are comfortable working with.
Buzz: In the webinar, you mention appraiser scoring. How important is it for an appraiser to manage their score? What can they do to improve it?
Pistilli: The appraisers score is their key to continued business. The webinar will show appraisers how AMC’s score appraisers and what is necessary to achieve highest scores.
Buzz: Why should appraisers watch this webinar?
Pistilli: Currently, about 80% of appraisal assignments today come from AMC’s. Knowing that, the appraisers that have the knowledge of how to choose and then work most effectively with AMC’s will be the most successful – this is a unique opportunity for appraisers to learn best practices of working with AMC’s and to grow their business and ultimately make more money!
Buzz: Tony, thank you so much for joining us. Stay tuned for Allterra Online’s upcoming webinar, How to Successfully Do Business with AMCs, available for purchase today, December 9, 2015!
Have any comments or would you like to submit content of your own? Email comments@appraisalbuzz.com
Share this article
Written by : Appraisal Buzz Staff
Keep up with the latest news, interviews, and topics with the Appraisal Buzz. Email comments@appraisalbuzz.com with anything you would like to tell our staff.
13 Comments
Comments are closed.
Tony, with your corporate gig it seems you are out of touch with the young man you were 25 years ago (independent appraiser) and are now simply attempting to preach and recruit appraisers to fill your areas of need. Truth be told, the appraiser and
AMC’s are in direct competition with each other and no appraiser wants to work
through a middleman (reduced fees, scope creep, etc.). Every time a local
credit union that I have a long term personal relationship with (internally
assigns orders) changes over to an AMC, it’s because your sales staff are
always actively recruiting new clients. To say your webinar is about how
appraisers can work WITH AMC’s directly ignores the fact that it’s not law, and
that you’re always attempting to steal the clients that we have a personal relationship
with. To believe as you say “appraisers wouldn’t mind who provides them
appraisal assignments”, is completely false. In 99% of all appraisals I do that
come from AMC’s, the borrower is unaware that they are paying hundreds of
dollars to some middleman company. The idea that I can’t discuss fees directly
with the borrower, my state does not require separation of the AMC split within
the report, I can’t include an invoice in the report, and that the borrower
only sees an appraisal fee on their paperwork (no AMC fee disclosed) is a
complete crime. Tony, we do mind when the AMC collects $50 every time I go back
for a $10 CO2 detector. You say Tony “you expect a USPAP compliant report”
however do you or your clients even understand what the set standards are? Why
have 15 pages of scope of work requirements, why the demand to have 2 active or
pending sales (not a requirement), why predetermine the time frame from when
you want your sales (90 days / not required), why demand a check of utilities/systems
(not required), why force the use of the cost approach (not required), why not
accept MLS photos, etc. As it relates to keeping a score on the appraiser, all
AMC’s are a joke. The idea that my score can go down because I accept an order
2 minutes after your 2 hour window, is a joke. If the appointment is set 25
hours after acceptance and is outside your 24 hour window, there should not be
a punishment. If your require revision requests within 4 hours and I complete
it later in the day after returning to the office, I should not be punished. The
idea that you’re keeping score on me from 25 states away while not having the
state, city, neighborhood, community, or MLS knowledge, should be a crime.
Having the report reviewed by an employee who took a single 7 hour USPAP class,
should not give anyone the feeling of comfort. With success coming state by
state (Louisiana / customary & reasonable fees) and AMC regulation taking
place nationally in 2.5 years, we shall see if the AMC’s can survive Tony. If
all AMC’s are to pay a minimum customary and reasonable fee, can they survive? Instead of collecting $250 on that $500 appraisal fee, can they survive when its law to
pay the appraiser (say $450) and they collect $50? I look forward to any
comments.
Amen! I agree with you whole heartedly. Most of my clients are not AMC’s. I work directly for the lending institutions because of their crap they want added and low fees.
What Bill is trying to tell you in a very nice manner is: “AMCs suck”. He’s also trying to convey the fact that the current appraisal ordering system that was shoved down the throats of appraisers is a criminal enterprise at best.
I suggest finding a new line of work aside from running “Leeches-R-Us”. The profitable glory days of AMCs truly is a thing of the past.
Get it? Got it? Good
Averaging 2 new direct lender clients every month. No middle man. No stupid assignment conditions like adding in MLS sheets and tax records for subject and comps. No specific verbiage and placement of said verbiage in my reports. Fees are way more than I can get with any AMC. The lending industry is starting to see the benefits of working without an AMC. Especially given the TRID requirements. But for those churn and burn appraisers who have no access to decent lender clients and/or no other experience other than mortgage origination work, then AMC’s might work for you. Gotta do a lot of assignments real fast at $275 -$300 to make it though. Hopefully, you won’t get jammed up with the state or a lender for one of those reports that was uploaded at midnight.
If its one thing I’ve learned in this industry Tim its that ones success as a appraiser can be in part be determined by state, city, county, or neighborhood location, the supply and demand of appraisers in your area, and the decisions by the banks and credit unions to use AMC’s. In Southern CA I compete with 4,000 other appraisers (within a few hundred miles) and the result has been an across the board reduction in fees regardless if they are direct lenders. Not that its the best place to get business,, but a look at Craigslist in my area shows no shortage of appraisers offering services for under $300. Good luck to you if you have higher paying opportunities as many do not.
I agree with Tim. I am located in Maryland and most of my work is for lenders who pay well more than AMC’s. Sorry you don’t have that luxury in California.
Tony is an honorable man who works for a firm that treats appraisers fairly. I encourage serious appraisers to listen to his suggestions. Many AMCs, like his and mine, can be good sources of good-paying assignments. Just scroll past all the complaining…we are all too busy to get bogged down with the negativity.
I’m not sure how honorable a man can be when with their lender partners they charge a borrower $500 for an APPRAISAL fee and don’t discuss the truth behind the charges. Borrowers have no idea there paying $250 to an AMC as the fees are not separated on their loan papers, the appraiser can’t split the fees in the report (state by state), the appraiser can’t discuss fees with the borrower, and of course we can’t include an invoice in the report. IF Tony’s company takes a smaller cut than most AMC’s, this does not in turn mean he is treating me fairly, it just may mean he’s committing a misdemeanor instead of a felony. As an independent appraiser I’m not looking to play ball with the AMC just so I can remain on their well behaved list so that I can get good-paying assignments. By all means Tony, lets just go through life with blinders on, stop complaining and just ignore the negativity (not). I for one make time to sign petitions, write my congressman, tell regulators what is going on, join coalitions, explain to borrowers the truth, tell agents & brokers about the issues we face. Its interesting Wes, as your very first comment comes out in support of an AMC.
If you notice he says he works for an AMC as well
By not reading his comments in their entirety and multiple times (Wes works for an AMC), I feel like an AMC asking the appraiser to address their concerns. Reread the report as it has already been addressed is the typical response I send back. After the AMC is informed of their mistake (revision not required), then comes my request to have their super computer scoring system updated to reflect the unnecessary revision request. The high school dropout answering the phone at the AMC can never with certainty inform me that my score will be corrected. Doesn’t matter, because the Tony’s and the Wes’s of the AMC world will advertise to their lender clients their scoring system assignment option, regardless of how accurate it is.
Speaking from another AMC! Your not fooling anyone! Most AMC’s don’t want to pay a fair fee and they all want the report back within 48 hours from inspection regardless of the due date they gave you.
Is this the same Wes McDaniel that worked at BOA/LandSafe for 17 years and later at CoreLogic? BOA charged borrowers some high appraisal fees only to split with staff appraiser between 40 to 50% of gross. Was the borrower ever informed that the full APPRAISAL FEE was not going to the individual licensed appraiser, but was being funneled back to BOA by way of their own AMC? Wes, were you in charge when BOA incorrectly labeled your staff appraisers with the wrong tax identification code? Did you thus contribute in some way to the $36,000,000 million dollar class action lawsuit and settlement a few months back? With the wrong tax label, staff appraisers were not paid overtime for years and thus the average settlement to the 365 appraisers were $64,000 each (some at more than $130,000 each). If you still work for CoreLogic Wes, did you help with the purchase of LandSafe? Please Wes, explain to me the truth about working with AMC’s.
Notice that Tony is just selling his company’s webinar, so take everything(and I mean EVERYTHING)he says with a grain of salt. Bill Johnson is right. Tony is OUT OF TOUCH and CLUELESS. I have worked for people like this before in my 45 plus years as an appraiser and they are corporate apologists from the get go. They typically have VERY minimal experience as fee appraisers and really don’t know what the fee appraiser’s world is actually like. Tony, bottom line is, 10 or more years ago my fee for a 1025 was $650 to $750, now I get $475 on the average. Most of the 1004 appraisals I get have a fee of under $400 and many are close to $300. The old fees were from $375 to $450(and not even for jumbo loans). This is the DEFINITION of getting screwed! Add this to the fact that 5 to 6 comparables are often required, along with page after page of what many like to call “scope of work”, but in reality is merely a ridiculous exercise in putting down every little move you make in the preparation of the appraisal report, as if all that verbiage will make poor appraisal practice acceptable just because you verbalize everything you do! The fee appraiser is getting screwed by a system that was supposed to foster independence, but has merely created a new dependence on AMC’s. If you don’t see that, I think there’s little hope for you. If you are presenting yourself as an advocate for the appraiser, you must think all of us are really stupid. We are not and we are tired of being insulted by people like yourself who treat is as if we are. You want to tell us how wonderful AMC’s are and how we can coexist with these thieves, just tell us, but don’t charge us money to find out your alleged secrets. That’s insulting beyond belief.