Yesterday on the Business Insider website, a guest columnist wrote an article titled “You’re All Wrong. Blame the APPRAISERS For The Mortgage Crisis.” The author, a business broker and commercial real estate agent, stated that real estate appraisers were single-handedly responsible for the current mortgage crisis. One passage reads: “Enter the real estate market of recent: Appraisers, knowingly, breached their fiduciary responsibility by lying about values.”
While everyone is entitled to their opinion, the article cites no specific instances of the alleged fiduciary irresponsibility, nor does it provide any supplementary information to back up the allegations. Without proof, you might as well blame the mortgage crisis on flamingos or leprechauns.
More importantly, blanket statements like this can do a tremendous amount of harm. Taken at face value, it makes all real estate appraisers sound unscrupulous and untrustworthy. And attempting to assign blame does nothing to help the country out of the crisis either.
If anything, the article does underscore the importance of seeking out and using a reputable, licensed, certified real estate appraisal firm. But it does little else.
