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Who I serve

Appraisal Management Companies

Boutique to national. Your review desk is now a licensed, disciplinable activity, and the file has to show which side of the line each message fell on.

What is pressing on you

  • Review that becomes a value demand is now an enforcement matter with a name on it. In March 2026 a state regulator suspended both an AMC and its chief review appraiser for six months with an eighteen-month probation, on conduct including withholding payment over a valuation dispute, adjusting comparable weightings to support a different conclusion, and sending the revised analysis back to the appraiser. Most states require a licensee to report disciplinary action within thirty days, so one state's finding becomes a multi-state exposure.
  • The other side of the line is just as dangerous. A federal court has held that independence requirements do not prevent a lender or an AMC from addressing a deficient or potentially biased report. Saying it could not be touched because of independence is not a defence.
  • Independent-contractor structure is not a shield. An AMC has been held to face vicarious liability in a valuation discrimination claim notwithstanding contractor classification.
  • Registry status is a binary eligibility fact and it depends on someone else's data hygiene. A state compliance review rated good still found active AMCs incorrectly listed as inactive and registrants missing from the national registry entirely.

Where I usually come in

  • A compliance and appraiser-independence gap assessment, because the line has license consequences on both sides. See the engagement
  • A review desk and QC operation build, with reviewer standards, calibration, and a defect taxonomy. See the engagement
  • A panel management program with removal records that survive a dispute. See the engagement
  • A fractional chief appraiser or compliance officer on retainer. See the engagement

What I bring to your side of the desk

I have run the appraisal desk on the lender side, so I know what your client is being asked for and why the request lands on you in the form it does. I have been the appraiser receiving the revision request, so I know which ones read as a correction and which read as pressure. And I do not run an AMC, which means I am the only person in that conversation with nothing to protect.

Questions

Can you review our review desk without joining our panel?

That is the only way I do it. I hold no panel seat anywhere and take no order flow, which is the whole point.

We operate in forty states. Where do you start?

With the registry record and the renewal calendar, because registration currency is binary and it fails quietly. Then the review desk, because that is where the enforcement risk lives.

Our reviewers are contractors. Does that change the exposure?

Not as much as the classification suggests, and recent liability holdings say so. The program has to govern the work, whoever performs it.

Sources

  1. State regulatory action, March 2026: AMC and chief review appraiser suspended six months with eighteen months' probation (trade press; attributed, not overstated)
  2. Reported federal decision, 2025: independence requirements do not prevent addressing a deficient report
  3. State AMC compliance review findings on registry accuracy

The first conversation is a conversation, not a pitch. Tell me what prompted it and I will tell you whether it is something I should be working on.

Schedule a Conversation