Lenders Continue To Tighten Up On Guidelines

Lenders continue to tighten up on guidelines and many Mortgage professionals are finding it harder and harder to earn a living. Home values have dropped in many markets and do to a soft market those home owners looking to refinance their properties are facing some serious challenges.
The value just isn't there in many places. Appraisers are not finding the values in properties that they were seeing just six months ago. Comps are hard to come by do to the fact that the sales of properties within an X mile radius are down, way down, which leaves an Appraiser with a slim list of comparable properties to make an informed and fair value assessment on a particular property. When this occurs some Appraisers tend to walk the line.
Values hikes! Some Appraiser will raise the value on properties in order to please a loan officer who is trying to provide the best service to his client. This also is a fine line. Many Mortgage professionals put a tremendous amount of pressure on Appraisers. They want the Appraiser to bend the line on true value. He's asked to go against his own ethics and guidelines, sometimes even threatened to bring in the value for the sake of earning a living. Appraisers are being asked to raise the appraised amount on a property so that the appraised value meets a lender requirements when it comes to the LTV in a mortgage transaction. Appraisers have a tough time finding loyal loan professional to keep them busy and earning a decent living.
Some Loan professional have been known to tell the Appraiser the exact value to which is needed to please a lenders underwriters. This is illegal!
Inflated Value on property Appraisal can cause some serious problems in the future for home owners, Mortgage Lenders,Investors, Buyers and many others. This causes a healthy market to turn into a market filled with negatives, such as foreclosures, slowing sales and struggling Real Estate professionals who really try to provide their clients with great service.
Many lenders who may have gone along with these inflated values in the past for the sake of the bottom line, making money, are giving property appraisal a second look,
a second opinion on the appraisals submitted to their house by mortgage brokers and the like.
Many of these submissions by mortgage brokers past the value requirement of many lenders with flying colors not too long ago. Today this is not the case. With lender practices being investigated, many have began to cover their hides by tightening up on their guidelines. They have now placed a second guard at the gate.
Loan professionals are feeling the effect of having loan submissions rejected more and more often.
There is no reason to point a finger at any one party. All are responsible for an unhealthy market as one entity can not exist without the other. Real Estate professionals on the whole need each other to survive. Lenders need Broker, Brokers need Loan Officers, Loan Officers need Real Estate Agents and many others who make the business for Real Estate what it is. People need to buy and sale real estate.
Every business, for the sake of meeting the bottom line, walks a fine line in one area or another to survive and to make profits. Business is business as it should be, but when the clientele is affected negatively, that line has to be made wider to better serve the customers who are just trying to live, as we all are, just trying to live our best life.

C Rucker