The Trump administration is proposing to eliminate the requirement of professional appraisals for many home sales — "a move that critics say could push the country back toward the see-no-evil days of mortgage lending that preceded the housing crash,"reports the Washington Post.
Just before Thanksgiving, the administration’s top financial regulators — the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — issued a joint proposal that would make traditional appraisals unnecessary for many new mortgages originated for less than $400,000. Instead of a formal appraisal, these homes would receive an “evaluation” by individuals who have no appraisal licenses or certification and would not be subject to current state regulatory oversight requirements that govern appraisers. The evaluators could be an “independent bank employee” or unnamed “third part[ies].” They would, however, have to be “competent” and possess “knowledge of the market, location and type of real property being valued.”
The full article is here.
