Having no official access to a client’s appraisal is nothing new for one Atlantic broker, who has nonetheless found a way around that.
Having no official access to a client’s appraisal is nothing new for one Atlantic broker, who has nonetheless found a way around that.
“As a mortgage broker, we are required to have all documentation pertaining to any file that we broker. Because of this I found an easy way around the appraisal company’s issue with the confidentiality,” says Kent Farnsworth, owner of Meridian Simply Mortgages. “This was to have the appraiser make the appraisal to ‘LENDER’ care of ‘BROKER HOUSE’. Because my company name is on the report, the appraiser will then email me a copy of the appraisal if requested.
“The lender clearly sees that the broker will receive a copy of the report, and if they take issue with it, then they can contact the appraiser and advise them otherwise.”
The procedure is a way around the difficulties another leading broker is now experiencing and the subject of a MortgageBrokerNews.ca article earlier this week.
Barrie broker Nick L’Ecuyer, with Verico The Mortgage Wellness Group, found himself out of the loop when appraisers refused to send copies of their assessments to his office last week, effectively breaking with their usual protocol.
One appraiser finally “told me ‘I can’t,’” says L’Ecuyer, “that he had been told to no longer send brokers appraisal reports.”
The director of professional practice at the Appraisal Institute of Canada, Nathalie Roy-Patenaude, said in an earlier interview that there have been no such directives issued to appraisers, adding that the policies on the sharing of personal information like what is included in an appraisal report can be found in Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA); PIPEDA Case Summary #2008-390; Residential Property Appraisal Documents are Owners’ Personal Information.
For Farnsworth, he says that he has been ordering appraisals using his procedure for several years now, and no lender has ever complained or offered any resistance.”
That may mesh with what Roy-Patenaude says.
“The Terms of Reference for the appraisal assignment should be in writing and agreed to by the parties prior to the assignment, to avoid any misunderstanding or additional work to amend the valuation report,” she told MortgageBrokerNews.ca. “In the report, the appraiser must identify the Client and the Intended User. In some instances, the Client and Intended User are the same (e.g. Bank 123 is ordering the appraisal as the client and will be the intended user), in other instances they can be different (e.g. the Client is Broker ABC and the Intended User is Bank 123).”
