Every person who owns a home in the U.S. is losing value and equity in their home because of HVCC. HVCC (Home Valuation Code of Conduct) is supposed to stop appraisal fraud by not allowing loan originators to have any direct contact with the appraiser. The problem is that all appraisals must now be ordered through Appraisal Management Companies, which are owned by none other than, the banks. hmmm… what is wrong with that picture?!

Andrew Cuomo is receiving an early Christmas present today -

Mark Sevitt, past president of NAMB (National Association of Mortgage Brokers), along with Frank Garay and Brian Stevens, are delivering 50 boxes of signed petitions (120,000 signatures) of people in the mortgage industry, real estate industry, and consumers, to Andrew Cuomo’s office today, requesting that HVCC be stopped. HVCC has done nothing to stop fraud, actually appraisal fraud is up by 46% in Q3 2009. Since brokers haven’t been able to have any direct contact with appraisers since March 2009, it appears that they have been incorrectly targeted as the problem. HVCC has done nothing but slow down the housing industry recovery and cause transaction after transaction to not close. That is the last thing the housing industry needs right now.

Here is a partial list of what HVCC does:

1. The loan originator must order the appraisal through the AMC – which on average adds about one or two weeks to the process.

2. The appraisal ordered from one lender cannot be transferred to another lender, so if something with the 1st lender doesn’t work out, the homeowner has to pay for a new appraisal to be done. ($500-$600)

3. The appraisal has to be paid upfront by the homeowner, out of pocket, before he even knows if the transaction will be approved or not. The approval, of course, is based upon the value of the home. Since no one can talk to the appraiser ahead of time, there is no way to determine if the value will be there, or not.

4. The AMCs don’t choose appraisers based upon what areas they are familiar with, as loan originators used to do. The appraisals wind up being done by appraisers who don’t even know the area the home is in.

The bottom line is that HVCC, which was intended to protect homeowners from fraudulent appraiser/lender relationships, is doing nothing but hurting them, instead. It’s only accomplishment has been to give the big banks even more power and control (along with a new revenue source) than they already have. It’s time to put a stop to HVCC – now.