The sun shines through

It was so bright today the sunglasses had to come out! Ken and trudged around the lake at 6:15 and it was not bright then, just damp and cold but once the day broke it was beautiful. The lake shimmered, beams of sunlight crept into all the rooms and the car felt warm.
Keanna came to visit which is always an adventure. This little dynamo pleases the dogs, warms up the laptop, rips through her homework and enlightens me with her newfound wisdom. Sometimes the things that come out are just hilarious and sometimes profound. Needless to say she brightens up my day and life in so many ways.

On the professional front a bill is moving quietly through Congress that would limit or remove the HVCC, that odorous management company system which robs about a third of our fees for which they do absolutely nothing which helps the client, the home owner. They are angry that more and more people are standing up and stating the obvious, that this is the wrong answer to solving the financial crisis so many find themselves in. Of course the huge issue has always been influence over the appraiser, someone with power or funds trying to tell the appraiser how to do his or her job, funny thing is over 1/2 of the appraisers report that they have been pressured by HVCC people to make deals work, nothing has really changed. So there is hope that the HVCC monster can be tamed. Hope is good. There is a subtle thing taking place in the industry across the country. When someone purchases a home and the appraisal is ordered through a management company the appraiser hired is usually the one who will promise to get the work done the quickest and for the lowest fee. There is no requirement for experience or samples of his or her work required. Just how cheap and how quick. Well Mr appraiser working under these conditions certainly is not going to go out of his way to do a complete job, so he just grabs the lowest comps in the area, jams them into the report, cuts the purchase price by thousands of dollars and emails the report in. He does not care that he has just destroyed a purchase by being way below market with his report. So the buyer loses the bid on the house and the house gets sold to someone else who has cash and the buyer begins the whole process over of trying to bid on a house to purchase. Yes he has lost his appraisal fee which is usually over $450 of which about $225 is paid to the appraiser. Now Mr homebuyer must start all over again and bid for a house with the strong chance that the appraiser will once again cut the sales price and destroy the purchase again. It has hurt the industry very bad. The appraiser should carefully study the market and determine what a willing buyer and seller would agree on for a price for the day of the inspection, use comparables that are recent and are similar in quality and condition to the home being appraised. Those appraisers that have enough saved to retire or have a second line of work they can switch to are doing so by the thousands across the country and in a short time there will be a shortage of experienced appraisers but not before many have their lives destroyed. Its a challenging time and the dozens of new rules being forced on loan officers and appraisers are not helping solve anything, government rarely helps when they try to solve problems, the market is much more to be trusted than government.

So these are some of the casual thoughts that run through my mind on a daily basis along with the desire to just be able to pay my basic bills.

This evening after I dropped Keanna off at her music class I visited the little hair salon where Nan used to go and Nikki still does. I think the lady is Amber, anyway she does a great haircut for $12. Then it was to the club to try to stretch out these lazy muscles. Then Lois tempted me to Subway for a wheat and garden burger sandwich which was great!
Now its home to relax with the doggies, write part of a report and hit the hay.

I appreciate my family so much and my extended family of friends and clients. Life has been very good to me in spite of setbacks and losses.

love

tim