The appraisal industry has a heaping amount of questions.
This became increasingly clear after HousingWire’s webinar on Wednesday on the state of the appraisal industry, featuring four industry experts: Brian Coester, CEO at CoesterVMS, Matt Simmons, partner at Maxwell, Hendry & Simmons, Zach Dawson, the director of collateral strategy at Fannie Mae, and Alan Hummel, chief appraiser at First American Mortgage Solutions.
The hour allotted to the webinar was able to cover a range of hot-button issues, but it still opened to door to a flood of more questions (more than a hundred in fact) from readers, which HousingWire plans to continue to cover in future webinars.
For starters though, an issue that weighed on a lot of peoples’ minds was if they’d even have a job for them in the future, and rightfully so.
Thus the conversation opened with the big question: Will technology replace appraisers?
The short answer from Dawson: No.
“I don’t think it’s going to replace appraisers, but it will impact and change the process,” said Dawson.
In fact, Dawson stated that even with technology, appraisers still don’t feel more productive than they were years ago.
It’s an area the industry could improve on, he added.
Hummel expanded on the topic stating that technology really impacts the work appraisers do but none of this eliminates appraisers.
From here the conversation moved on to appraisal demand, AMC fees and more. For the full details on what was discussed during the call, a copy of the presentation and full recording will be available for free to readers later week. Check back here later for a link to download.
