One Barrie broker found himself out of the loop on his appraisers’ reports, only to learn that his appraiser had been told only to deliver reports to the lenders.
One Barrie broker found himself out of the loop on his appraisers’ reports, only to learn that his appraiser had been told only to deliver reports to the lenders.
“We received six or seven emails this week confirming that the appraisal has been sent to the lender, along with the value of the property – but we never got a report,” says Nick L’Ecuyer, principal broker at Verico The Mortgage Wellness Group in Barrie. “So we asked one of the appraisers for the report, and he said ‘I can’t.’”
The appraiser told L’Ecuyer that he had been sent a communication from the Appraisal Institute of Canada to “no longer send to brokers” any appraisal reports.
“Is it because the broker’s integrity is being question, or are they just removing brokers from the process?” asks L’Ecuyer.
“That is not the position at all,” says the Director of Professional Practice Nathalie Roy-Patenaude at AIC. “The Privacy Commissioner has ruled that appraisal reports contain personal information, and as such any personal information has to be redacted if made available to a third party.”
Roy-Patenaude explains that appraisal reports are created for two parties – identifying the client (prospective buyer or owner) and the intended user (the lender) as the only ones allowed access to the document.
“If the broker wants a copy of the report, they must have written permission from the client and the intended user,” she says. “This has always been the case.”
L’Ecuyer has so far been able to gain access to the reports by contacting the lenders, who have been accommodating in sharing the information. For L’Ecuyer, it is frustrating for the brokerage as it looks to properly service clients without access to an appraiser’s report. Generally, the borrower hasn’t received copies of appraisal reports.
“If a lender comes back and says, ‘This won’t work’, how do we know why it won’t work? All we can do is go to the next lender, and then another appraisal is needed – and we won’t have access to that appraisal either,” he says.
Roy-Patenaude thinks that the difficulty L’Ecuyer is having may just be in how the request for appraisal is being presented.
“Maybe it is a case of something getting lost in translation. It is necessary for every broker to comply to our standards of practice,” she says. “If he has been told by different appraisers in just one week, I think this may be the case.”
So far, it has only been small, individual appraisal companies that have not supplied a report, says L’Ecuyer.
“NAS (Nationwide Appraisal Services), Solidifi and BrokerWorx have so far been providing reports,” he tells MortgageBrokerNews.ca. ”But who knows for how long?”
The Appraisal Institute of Canada (AIC) was founded in 1938 and is the premier real property valuation association in Canada. With approximately 4,800 members across Canada and around the world, the AIC works collaboratively with 10 affiliated provincial organizations.
