The most important conference in years

Transcription

1 Issue Date: October 26, 2009, Posted On: 10/26/2009 Running Your Business The most important conference in years Valuation Expo 2009 is coming at the right time. After a year of unprecedented activity in the appraisal industry on both the state and federal level, now is the time that all professionals involved in the industry come together to discuss the issues of the day. From Nov. 8-11, Valuation Expo 2009 will be held in The Big Easy, New Orleans, La. Put on every year by Joan Trice, the publisher of Appraisal Buzz, ( it is the biggest conference for the appraisal industry. There really isn t another national appraisal event like this, said Trice, who recently spoke to Valuation Review. And this is one of the most important conferences in recent years. The housing crisis has forced everybody to confront the deficiencies with the collateral valuation process across the board, she said. We don t have just one issue to deal with we have a boatload of them. It s good to figure out which direction everyone is going in. Alan Hummel, senior vice president and chief appraiser of Forsythe Appraisals, agreed with Trice that the conference comes at a critical juncture. We re at that turning point. We know the problems that occurred, and we have people looking at our profession, saying what are you doing to make certain that we don t get into this jam again? For Hummel, the conference is an opportunity for the industry to shape its destiny. There s a great deal of pressure for the lending profession, of which appraisers are part of, to come up with some answers themselves, because if we allow government to dictate it, we may not like the answers, he said. You ve got the main players of the industry sitting in the same hotel. You would think we would be able to come up with what can we do to make certain that what went wrong doesn t happen again. The conference itself starts on Sunday, Nov. 8, with a bus tour of New Orleans with a twist the tour will be tailored for appraisers, with several local guides, including local appraisers, pointing out how the city has gone about its recovery since Hurricane Katrina, pointing out local home values. The tour costs $50 and starts at 12 noon and is scheduled to take three hours, with presentations by Habitat for Humanity and the Army Corps of Engineers. The next day there will be a day-long meeting for the collateral risk network, a membership-only coalition of 100 professionals including the GSEs, lenders, vendors and Wall Street players in an event moderated by Trice and Mark Simpson. This is being billed as the most important meeting of the CRN since its inception in December 2003.

2 Also on Monday, there are three day-long workshops. The LSI Quality Road Show, free for LSI appraisers but $150 for all others, will feature George Vann, chief appraiser for LSI, training appraisers to improve their analysis and measurement of neighborhood markets. The road show will provide four hours of continuing education (CE) credits, but only for California, Oregon, Washington, Texas, Pennsylvania and Michigan. One of the other workshops is the ACI Technology Workshop, where George Opelka and Rich Heyn will be meeting appraisers to talk about ACI products including ACI2009, ACI365 and ChoiceCredits. Although this workshop is free, it doesn t contain any CE credits. The final workshop is FHA Basics for Appraisers led by Pete Gillispie, senior appraiser for FHA. He will be discussing requirements for being on the FHA Appraiser Roster, FHA s appraisal reporting requirements and minimum property standards and requirements, among other topics. Monday evening will be the opening reception, where appraisers can network with potential clients, peers, lenders and vendors, all while enjoying drink tickets sponsored by Interthinx and Lender Processing Services. Keynote panel On Tuesday, the exhibition hall opens while the keynote panel gets underway. The keynote panel is always seen as the biggest draw for the conference, and this year it includes representatives from all the government agencies involved in the appraisal industry. First to speak is Alfred Pollard, general counsel for the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), who will be speaking about the Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC). This represents a real coup for the conference s organizers as Pollard was heavily involved in the drafting of the HVCC, along with the GSEs and the New York Attorney General s office. Also discussing updates from their respective agencies are Jacqueline Doty, director of collateral policy, credit policy and portfolio management from Freddie Mac; Bob Murphy, manager, property standards, credit policy & controls, single-family for Fannie Mae, Gerard Kifer from the Supervisory Appraisers Department of Veteran Affairs; and FHA s Gillispie, who will be discussing FHA s recent policy changes contained in Mortgagee Letter Because of the large volume of interest this panel will attract, the organizers have extended the Q&A session that comes immediately after the presentations. Valuation visionaries The second panel of the day concerns the future of appraising. Valuation Visionaries is being moderated by Crispin Bennett of MDA Lending Solutions. The first speaker will be Mark Johnson, COO of LSI, who will be discussing appraisal management companies and the HVCC. Then Opelka, vice president of sales and marketing at ACI, will be presenting Turning back the clock to see the future, which details the history of the appraisal industries successes and failures, as well as providing a road map of the direction the industry needs to head. Chuck

3 Mureddu of Quality Valuation Services will be looking at how to get the appraisal industry back to the basics through compliance and assessment of value. Rounding out the panel is Bill Rayburn, CEO of FNC Inc. Rayburn explained to Valuation Review, My presentation is about the issues facing appraisers and the industry, where I think the industry s headed and the skills that are going to be needed in the future. For example, how does the industry keep up with the demands being imposed by the marketplace in terms of transparency? There is a need for low-level information and data throughout the mortgage process. Appraisers are going to have to change their mindset and expectations they have when they deliver their work product. In the past, they typically have worked for a local lender and not been held to task for an appraisal by other parties further downstream. That s a big sea-change for appraisers, he continued. They re going to have to do a better job of explaining what is going on in the market. Rayburn was enthusiastic about the conference in general, This is a small industry where everyone knows everyone else. I look forward to seeing all the players in this space, seeing where they are, where they re going and listening to their take on all of this. Renegineering the appraisal process The next day features two more panels. The first panel takes its name from the whitepaper that Joan Trice wrote earlier this year, Reengineering the Appraisal Process and is moderated by Leland Trice, principal of The Trice Group LLC. Leland Trice told Valuation Review why this panel was so relevant. The financial meltdown exposed a lot of the weaknesses in the system and any crisis and failure of this magnitude opens the door for reengineering, he said. The status quo is always a powerful thing to work against, but when you have an environment where the status quo has failed miserably, the parties involved are willing to step back and look at the process. The keynote speaker for Leland Trice s panel is Sue Potteiger, collateral risk manager for Fannie Mae. Leland Trice was pleased to have a Fannie Mae representative speaking on his panel. Fannie has made some pretty significant changes that seem to have flown under the radar, he said. In the past, Fannie and Freddie really never saw an appraisal unless it was a repurchase situation. But for the first time ever, Fannie (and I assume Freddie will follow) are going to start collecting significant amounts of appraisal data. By collecting this data at the time of purchasing a loan, the GSEs have a better opportunity to understand that risk from the collateral side and then use that information to help model risk even better. Also on the panel is Rachel Dollar, editor of MortgageFraudBlog.com. She ll discuss what she sees in her world with respect to fraud and what elements of reengineering could combat that, said Leland Trice. With Dollar is Guillermo Gower from NASOFT USA, a provider of IT solutions to the mortgage industry. He will be discussing technology s impact on the industry.

4 Completing the panel will be Rick Langdon, chief appraiser for Wachovia, and David Hundreiser, senior manager of appraisal quality for Solidifi. Rick has always been very progressive in trying to empower the appraisers that have worked directly for him with using data and analytics, said Leland Trice. He ll be discussing how technology can allow us to make better use of more data and a more analytical approach to valuation. David Hundreiser is going to talk about the increased emphasis on market conditions in addition to value, so that lenders can look at new ways to understand markets in addition to understanding a single property, he continued. Regulatory Update The final panel concerns the regulators at the state level. Moderated by Jeff Dickstein from Pro- Teck Services, the Regulatory Update panel will give status updates for HR 1728, the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2009, as well as any other state and federal legislation pertaining to appraisers. Among the speakers on the panel is Larry Disney, executive director of the Kentucky Real Estate Appraisers Board, whose talk will be titled The HVCC: Appraiser blessing or curse? Jim Park, the executive director of the Appraisal Subcommittee, will be giving the federal regulatory update. Kelly Davids, the director of the Ohio Real Estate Division, will discuss regulatory enforcement and discipline from a state s perspective, a very popular topic among appraisers that is sure to draw a crowd. Don Kelly, industry veteran and president of the Kelly Group LLC, will forecast compliance issues that may be on the horizon for appraisal regulation as well as examine the ramifications of HR 3044, the 18-month moratorium on the HVCC that is currently sitting before the House Committee on Financial Services in Congress. The final speaker for the panel is going to be Lewis Allen, mortgage and banking consultant for Lewis J. Allen & Associates. He is presenting an intriguing, if slightly unrealistic idea: what life for appraisers would be like if there was just one set of rules and guidelines for every agency, including Fannie Mae, FHA, VA, FHFA and others, instead of the current patchwork of rules and regulations that change from agency to agency and from state to state. Leland Trice hopes that the conference will give everybody something to think about. He would like to takeaway, a sense from key decision makers in the industry that there is an appetite to fundamentally rethink how we go about appraising and collateral risk and a willingness to examine all components and make changes wherever there s room for improvement. Building your business But Valuation Expo is not just about taking stock of the industry or planning a road map for the future of appraising. The opportunities for networking or building your company are huge. As Hummel said, We try to get out of these conferences a read of what is coming for 2010 but the expo is just a little bit different in that it has the clients as well as the appraisers and the

5 technology vendors all in the same room. So this is positioned perfectly for us to look at what the lenders are looking for, what types of technology are going to be available to us and how the appraisers are going to be handling it. I m looking to come out of there and say, okay, this is how Forsythe Appraisals can continue to be a leader for our profession, Hummel continued. Those in attendance can also receive CE credits, though they must attend each session to receive the 7 hours of daily credit. There is no credit for attending just one session every day. Each attendee is scanned before entering, and upon leaving, each session, eradicating the old conference cheat of hitting the golf course while receiving the credits. The only states excluded from the CE process are Maine and Alaska. The conference will be taking place at the newly restored The Roosevelt Hotel, part of the Waldorf Astoria Collection. The hotel itself is located in the historic French Quarter of New Orleans. As Joan Trice said, I personally love this city. It is home to some of the finest restaurants in the country. Even if appraisal issues have no interest to you, the city is just an incredible backdrop to the event! Valuation Review will be reporting live from Valuation Expo Go to for breaking news, interviews and breakdowns of panel discussions. For information on the Expo itself, go to