Not a chance in hell!!!
I don't care what anybody says. I have been in "Broker Price Opinion Hell" for weeks now.
Some of you know that I do reports for lenders (through a 3rd party company) for properties that are pre-foreclosure, in foreclosure, short sale - both before bank agrees to do it, and after an offer is received, PMI removal, loan modification, and the newest thing - "deed in lieu" which is giving the deed back to the lender and walking away. I've been doing BPO's for this company for 10 years.
From early 2006 to fall of 2010, I averaged between 15-25 sometimes 30 a month.
In the fall of 2010, was when the "robo-stamping" investigation started. I was lucky if I did 2 or 3 a month.
Until this February, I did 8 of them. I was quite happy to get them!
March - I did 28.
April - I did 48.
May - I did 77! Yep that is
77.
Only 1 was a PMI removal. The rest were all pre foreclosure, foreclosure, short sale and 2 deed in lieu. I must have turned down at least 25, simply because I just couldn't do them as I work 29 hours/wk at my other job.
I have already done 19 this month. And I have 8 more to finish by tomorrow afternoon. It is only the 8th. All all but one are either pre or foreclosure, and one is a short sale.
Some of these have been vacant for a year or more.
Some have had prior reports done on them for the last 2-3 YEARS!!
Some have been owned by the same people for
over 15-20 years!!!, but they got seconds on them.
Some have only been in them for a year or two, and based on the price of the house, I would guess it was job loss. I did one, a short sale, a 5000+SF house, VERY expensive. Owner has been very ill with first heart disease requiring open heart surgery then gets colon cancer. Losing the house, but at least has a decent health prognosis.
Some, I either know, or know of, the owners. ( which makes it very difficult for me to do them.
)
According to the a few of the people I have spoken to, who work for the company I do these for....they do not expect the numbers to decrease anytime in the next several months.
Very few are comping out to property tax assessor value. Some are close, some are multi -thousands less.
There are very strict guidelines that must be followed when doing these reports. I couldn't "skew" the numbers if I wanted to even if I knew how to do it.
And before any of you jump on this and say "oh but houses are selling here!" ....well they are here too. And that's a good thing. But let me tell you all.....there is a world of shit out there coming down on the housing market when all these houses start getting listed and put on the market.
A couple of week ago I did an exterior report on a house that had 3 prior reports done on it. The last one was 6 WEEKS prior to the one I did. In that 6 week period
65 foreclosed houses were dumped onto the market in the subject's desigated mls area FIFTY of them were within ONE HALF MILE of the house I was reporting on. All by one bank. Because of those 50 houses, and what had sold in that 6 week period within a half mile of the subject house.... I had to price the house $20,000 LESS than it had been priced 6 weeks before, and I was lucky to keep it at $20K. I had to do a lot of documentation to prove it too.
We better all hope and pray that Romney gets elected and can get some major changes into our economy or we are screwed even more than we have been the last 3 years.
