I don't know how the Jedi did it.
There's nowhere to hold it.
It doesn't have a handle.
It doesn't have anything.
It's a very uncomfortable weapon.
It's very uncomfortable.
They were probably holding like, it was probably all CGI.
Actually, no.
What are you talking about?
It was real.
Are you right?
Are you one of those guys?
All right.
And welcome back.
Little Matt McConaughey for you.
Welcome back to another episode of Value Nation.
This is a show full of random events, just like life.
But more importantly, we're here to help everyone understand appraisal and appraisal management
business, just a little bit better.
We're going to keep it light, have some laughs like we always do, usually at our own expense
and talk about the things that we do.
And we're going to be talking about the things that we do.
Have some laughs like we always do, usually at our own expense and talk about some headlines
in the housing market.
Don't forget, watch us, listen to us, follow us, like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram.
Are we tweeters?
Twitter?
I believe we're on Twitter.
Charlie, you got to help me out here once in a while.
Twitter.
Yeah.
No.
I think I said the TikTok.
No, no.
Anyways, we're out there.
You can find us on Apple Podcast app.
Like, subscribe, tune in.
Let's do this.
So, what we got?
What kind of plans do you have for the holidays?
Yeah, absolutely nothing.
I love it.
You love it?
Yeah.
Really nothing.
So, shared custody situation here.
And we rotate every other year back and forth.
daughter stayed with me on Christmas Eve. So I'm I'm loaning it up on Christmas Eve this year.
So I guess that's a good segue. So tell me what's your what's your go-to Christmas drink from there
because you're going to be sipping on a couple of them on Christmas Eve by yourself. Hot toddies baby.
Hot toddy. Dude I make a mean hot toddy. I tell you what I make a mean hot toddy dude. I have never
heard a grown man say that ever. What? If he's not bartending. Yeah. Oh man no man good bourbon.
Good bourbon. Some honey. Some lemon. Some hot water man. It's it's that's my go-to if I'm like
feeling sick. I'm starting to get cold. Well yeah oh yeah I'll just take a shot of JMo right to the
base if I'm feeling sick. Let's just burn it right out. But it's like like like my go-to drink is just
bourbon neat or bourbon on the rocks. Like that's that's my go-to. Yeah. You know nightcap whatever.
So it's a nice change of pace to actually like and your drink of water you're hydrating while
you're doing a little bit. You're hydrating a little bit. I mean I'll probably see in the morning.
I'll sprinkle some of those in this season. Well I mean I'm an old-fashioned guy like I like that or
bourbon on the rocks. I'm lazy man. I really got to um I really got I just gotta get the bitters
so I can start making some more. I mean I've never gotten the right stuff so I got new motivation. I
do have an update that is kind of coincides with value nation. So this is a decent segue to what
I want to talk about next is uh is moving rooms around the house. The um so I think I'm gonna have
like an actual office because currently my desk is set up in a living room. That's why I don't sit
that's why I don't sit at my desk with this because it's like I got the dog's tail behind me. Like I
did the very first episode. I got like some of my chief's memorabilia. You can see the stairs are
right there. Oh yeah yeah okay. Yeah it's a weird spot in the house but like it made the most sense
whenever I first started working from home. I just never changed it but um so my daughter is getting
older now and like right now our doors are right across from each other in the hallway. She's 13,
eighth grade, gonna go into high school next year and her and I kind of had the talk where she
wants to do what all kids do when they get olders move to the downstairs bedroom. Right. Where it's
like her own little apartment. She's got her own bathroom in here. Living room will kind of become
her little space and so like I'll have the upstairs she'll have the downstairs. Like it's happened.
It started happening. Like what age is a pro like do you do you agree with this timing? She's 13,
halfway through eighth grade. Like I did the same thing right. Yeah I did. I did the same thing too.
Like when my older sister moved to college I started begging to take that downstairs room
because it was always like the oldest privilege to yeah exactly in my house. I might have been a
freshman in high school. Yeah I might have been my freshman year when it when it finally when it
finally happened. Yeah because there was four of us in the house four boys in the house.
Older brother had it first then he was out and it was my turn yep and then my two brothers after
that. So yeah it must have been it was like early high school. So eighth grade I mean I guess
it's I like it. I like it for selfish reasons. I'm gonna turn her bedroom where I did the
recording you know. Yeah you've seen every room in my house at this point. But uh I'm gonna turn
that in my office and that and that kind of came from the hot toddy old-fashioned situation because
like it's not a huge bedroom but I will have I think I'll have room in there to put the desk
maybe like a little love seat get a tv in there and I'll set up like my little that's where like
all my bourbon bottles would be. I'll have like a little bar set up in there so then maybe I will
actually like get some betters and get some other stuff to where it's like an actual bar set up.
I like it yeah dude I like it. It's like the man room the man office it's not a big cave
because it's upstairs you can't call it the cave right. No you can't no that's a great idea so I
had so I have I have an office it's a bedroom but I have a separate bar down on like the on the main
floor like I said with like a couch and the trees there and all that good stuff. But I have the only
problem with that is like I don't have a cool place to display all the really nice bottles and
stuff I got like I got a so I turned 40 last week and oh yeah happy birthday by the way man
you're just gonna skip over that I was just gonna let that one go you're just gonna skip over it
yeah you didn't see it on the notes come into this you're like I'm not gonna say a word about
that. I wasn't going to but now you just you struck me with this freaking bourbon conversation
so my wife she's the the best she threw me a surprise birthday party um she's been planning
and lying to me for months now she's apparently she's a very good liar and I'm very terrified at
this point but I've been like backtracking thinking about all the weird crap and I'm like oh now it
makes sense for like three months but she had people show up that I haven't like uh all my
brothers came in friends from Ohio um all people around here in northern Virginia all my friends
came in um family it was great like I met my little nephew for the first time haven't seen him
he's almost a year now yeah he's a year this month um my brother was there so anyways it was
fantastic we did it was at a uh a distillery which was all about bourbons and gins oh sweet
and so but everybody even though my wife's like don't bring give him anything he's a grown man
like everybody brought like a bottle of bourbon for him so now I have like you all of these like
this assortment and plus they someone gave me a kit on actually to make my own bourbon
which is really cool I've never done that before that's what that's what I've been working on
that's why I would need like a back bar for it though you know I mean there are some place to
display all the bottles instead of just putting it underneath in the bar oh no you gotta like I
want to look at it it's like in all its glory dude I I went to cheap rat on it and I don't mind it
like I bought because I like wine too um I just bought like some like like these four
shell wine racks because they have the top off so like I keep my wine and the wine racks and then
like it's got like a shelf right above the top so like shorter bourbon bottles can fit in there
and then on the top I just have my bourbon bottles kind of display you know tallest to shortest
like what that's a good idea yeah I mean dude yeah like 30 40 bucks for one of those things
I built I built the bar we have so like it's like a palette bar I kind of want to do that for the
office though because I'm because I don't want to better set up in like some of the cabinets
or get you like then you got to get like a smoking jacket and some house shoes you know that I hey
I got the house shoes on right now yeah so do I it's the thing Christmas next year I'm gonna get
we're gonna just a nice little you have smoking jacket don't judge the house shoes man they're the
they're the best that's literally what I'm wearing yeah the hug house shoes I mean not the brown boots
things like probably they got the rubber on the bottom you can wear these in the grocery store
if you want it's a shoe it's typically a shoe but it's a house shoe but it's got the nice fur on
the inside it's like a it's a pillow for your foot it's a warm hug for your foot yeah
oh my god get me back on track all right new segment new segment alert new segment let's do it
we've never done this I like this I like this idea on this day so we're gonna roll through some on
this day's so this is gonna air December 16th a week from today so we're talking about while
we're filming so I'm gonna run through just you know for anybody watching on the 16th on this day
the day this is gonna air big one right here baby Boston Tea Party let's go oh 1773 342 chests of
tea the British East India Company in the Boston it's a party dude that's crazy though that's
pretty that's a pretty nice on this day to have on actually yeah yeah then one is not so nice
1631 Mount Vesuvius oh yeah not so great not so great uh 1944 beginning of the Battle of the
Bulge there was something about um it was like wasn't that it was based on like a bridge or
something that that both sides wanted and needed and today was the day that somebody crossed over
the other's minds and that's that was considered the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge which
lasted forever um and then 2009 the movie Avatar was released
oh and part two part two is uh coming up yeah coming up yeah that's right internationally
internationally released 2009 I saw the wildest thing that I can never unsee again about Avatar
um this was last week I caught my you know scroll paralysis and
comparing movies that had gotten completely ripped off from other movies okay Dances with Wolves
so think about it the army takes like like wasn't he kind of like a broken man or something like
that forget what like or he was disabled or something like that so they made it to where
yeah he was disabled so Kevin Costner yeah well he was deemed unfit for action right yeah yeah
yeah that's what it was so they sent him to go be friends the Indians and then make it to where
um to teach them about our culture about the colonization that was coming their way he ends up
becoming more than just friends with them like learns their ways embraces their ways falls in
love then ends up fighting with the people that he was sent to colonize against the people he was
sent there by that are trying to colonize them hold the phone it's the exact same story as Avatar
did you come up with this on your own because otherwise no I wish I did I wish I could take
credit but dude James Cameron ripped off Dances with Wolves it's the exact same story exact same
plot line except it's just blue people except for it's yeah blue people on another on another
blue people in another on another I've been wanting to talk to somebody about this ever since I saw
that blew my mind I was like this is complete ripoff complete I wish I was smart enough to come
up with these things I oh my god okay well I well let's see which let's see which movie he
rips off of the second one right we'll see I mean that's wild man I never even never even
would have connected the two but I see the story and how they play out um great no that's another
that's another one you could fall asleep during but still it's good yeah yeah it's long it was long
how about some uh what's the magic mortgage mortgage numbers I can't believe you turn this
into a thing but okay we're gonna run with it the magic mortgage if I can't even say it
magic mortgage I can't say they're magic mortgage numbers what if we did like you're gonna play
a little simple give me some all right so let's see all of our data as we know is through what
um this is for up through October right yeah members will be out yeah they released the numbers
on like the 18th or something like that the next month so it takes a while to go through all
the see but before we get into that data today's magic rate is 6.33 on a 30-year fix
we're coming back down that's four straight weeks of the rate coming down what were we at last
last filming six point uh six point four nine was okay oh yeah down from six point four nine is that
yeah read your notes michael I mean reach your notes michael I mean it's coming down it's going
in the right direction buying power still is questionable um they say that the buying power
of well I'm sorry the inventory and the amount of home purchases for the values of like 100,000
to 250 and anything over a million those two segments are way way down really yeah and they
said they attributed to that to like so in the lower lower half it's uh it's availability and what's
there right and then for a million plus it's all those people have taken a bath in the stock market
and um any kind of like 401ks everything so they have less to pull out for like down payments and
stuff like that um interesting but I mean that's a wide range in the middle what are we talking about
two two fifty plus up to a million what else give me numbers give me I got you I got you ready uh
nine straight months of existing home sales declining as of the end of October uh yeah no
yeah the number of sales yeah that's still a while to think about nine straight months
of the number of homes being sold declining well yeah after the last two years we've had
um let's see 5.9 percent sales fell from September to October so year over year it's like 28 percent
28 and a half percent roughly okay lumber lumber is a huge thing right within these new construction
and all this stuff that you know to try and bring the inventory back up um lumber I didn't know that
it was based on per thousand boards per thousand feet of boards sorry yeah they gotta have some of
the terminal price I didn't know that I would have so that's right that's how it's like the
stock is traded you know like gold and crude it's an interesting because you see the that's why the
numbers are so big so like as of right now it's they're going at 419 420 bucks roughly per
thousand feet of board right just say 420 I did say 420 you're right just checking
okay if you got it now now legal in Missouri is it well it's legal in Virginia too yeah um that's
a down what 420 bucks per thousand feet of board of lumber down 70 since March it peaked it peaked
it over 1400 yeah which which makes sense that hits home with me because I need to read read do
my deck oh yeah the frame is good so I don't need a whole new deck but like everything else is gonna
go stairs railings you know boards on top do you have real wood or is it that trek deck stuff no
it's real wood um and but you know I was talking about doing it in the spring and in the summer
and everybody said no no the price of the lover the price of lovers get caught you like that was
the time to do it it's like who will do my deck right now because I mean the cost is
yeah you live in Kansas City there's nobody's gonna be working outside right now in December
it's cool yeah no it's so up and down though Kansas City weather update 41 degrees high of 48
low of 32 hey we had a see we have this low pressure system coming from the south
that's gonna combine with this high pressure system from the north we need to get you a green
screen and that's bringing in some of the that front is bringing in you know the cold air
from Canada and it's gonna push out you know it's gonna cause high winds for a little bit maybe some
rains the two two pressure systems combined is gonna push out to the east over over your direction
and then from there it's just gonna be frigid for you to practicing that like that was that was
really well done I used to want to be a weatherman I mean it's one of the only jobs you can get like
wrong 90 percent of the time still have it's educated guesses just like being a dad
dad can I eat this I don't know let's if all how long was it on the floor
yeah sure sounds good all right second rule now let's make it a 10
that's I mean yeah that's what we're here for educating the young our young minds educated
guesses our youths just out here guessing baby so so we're six episodes in right and we haven't
really told people what we do with an amc what do we do an appraisal management company appraisal
management company let's let's let's break it down a little bit for them so that you know if they
don't really have a full full picture um they get a little better idea it's not just not just an
order taker and would you call us like the fluff not fluffer the buffer the buffer yeah totally
we're kind of the buffer between you know those those parties handling the mortgage and then
who needs to appraise right and dividing line between yeah I remember when I first got in the
business there was a lot of those conversations of uh oh man I remember when I could just text
or call the appraiser myself you said I still I still yeah you're the problem that's why
I still hear that like yeah you know back in the day I could have just called the appraiser myself
and we talked about this we're like no well you know that was um it's a little bit of a conflict
of interest there so yeah a little bit I mean the fact that people are still saying that and amc's
like we're the first amc license in the country and we've been around for what is it 13 years
12 years yeah we're not the oldest amc not the oldest amc we're the first first licensed guy
to get a state license yeah Arizona right yeah Arizona zero zero one but um so yeah so the amc
is there to like we we provide a service and we we're not necessarily providing a product we're
providing a service that helps troubleshoot through the entire appraisal process and and also helps
check the boxes on a bunch of requirements and things that are needed to be done along the way
and after the report's completed right right a lot of uh a lot of those sticky uh compliance
uh pieces that are now required or if it's like a fha file um usda all those guys like
there's a whole nother level of checks and balances that amc will do for files like that so
that so yeah yeah you gotta make sure certain certain things are getting done during the
inspections it's it's not as simple as like you know we touched on what happens during appraisal
and yeah it really is kind of a simple thing um it's not the same as a home inspection like
what we talked on that episode but there is certain requirements based on the loan type
that right certain things have to be inspected and tested for some loan types versus the others and
and obviously the company you're working with as an amc has to know those things and double check
the report to make sure all those things are touched on and present before it is delivered
and then you know to add one layer to it i mean we it doesn't i guess we can kind of go out of
order here it doesn't necessarily matter um you know after we review the port and everything's
touched on we checked all the boxes reports good to go and be delivered um satisfactory then there's
these various portals that we have to upload these reports to as well and deliver those cylinders and
mortgage companies banks um you know fha has special portal has to go to fainting fainting
freddie you know has to go through ucdp and produce ssrs and send those through and then
sometimes those ssrs fail sometimes upload fails then you got to go back look through the report
figure out okay yeah this we got this error message we got a grill support our support staff
really guys fix this right now i i do myself you know my background started i was man my amc
journey's nuts another sidebar i was like qc strictly then like qc escalations qc management
then went over to vendor management and went to like vendor management then upper vendor management
then vendor manager manager then like operations manager basically and then sales and account
management it's basically where we're at now so it's like i've gone through the whole spectrum
it's like i i can't stand waiting to get stuff done so i i have you know i got my access i got
my username and password for for those various portals and when there comes up i mean i die
i think most of them are so easy fixes most of the time but the thing is is that's that's a big
benefit to using an amc is we have staff and lots of staff who understand and know and have seen a
million of these errors versus trying to handle it yourself as a lender and then reaching out to
people trying to figure out okay well we're getting this you know it says the xml file which appraisals
are uploaded in xml files there's an htp8 code error blah blah blah what does this mean it's like
well you got a corrupted xml yeah like you need to get that from the source save it once upload it
to the file it should work it's somehow getting corrupted through emails is what i found on that
one like it's little tidbits like that that we've seen a million times because we deal with multiple
different clients so we deal with a larger volume of orders so we're going to see more errors than
a lender would see just dealing with strictly their appraisals so oh yeah from the sheer amount
of volume that we do so we're going to be able to help you out troubleshoot things a lot quicker
and get you your report and all the necessary documents which is all anybody wants to see in
the end right they want service man service service with a smile service with a smile all day tangent
or another schwarz tangent sportsy tangent yeah i don't know i get fired up talking about appraisals
uh what's another big piece that you would say i mean we'll forget that we do well i mean obviously
the the most obvious one is is we have to find appraisers and assign orders and that is some
people you talk to do you ever notice some people will reach out to you like it can't be that hard
keep just just finding appraisers send it to you like it's really it's really not that easy like
it's not as it's not like yeah you can we get an order we double check to make sure everything's
correct and your address is you know tied to usps so that's correct you know loan type matches the
the product i mean all the necessary information's in there then we go like okay what appraisers are
in this area and it's not like all right well this guy is five miles away ratings are good
checks out clicks and and they don't forget about the order it doesn't work like that right doesn't
necessarily mean that guy's gonna accept the order yeah that's the biggest piece uh especially when
we're everybody was really busy over the last couple years right um it was it took a lot and
you know there are extended turn times because of it and let's be honest like everybody has heard
this i'm sure at one point or another that appraisers is that that's an aging slash dying
employment you know um job right average age of the appraiser is what 65 or something like that
it's i'm talking about that seven years ago and it was like 55 58 yeah so these dudes are getting
older it's only got up since yeah they're only getting older and we're uh regulations and rules
that are in place that make it extremely hard for someone new to come in and be a part of this so
yeah so to your point like it there's no guarantee that since there's such a small pool there's no
guarantee that that first guy that looks great on paper that his schedule's gonna line up it
doesn't mean it's a big thing it doesn't mean to accept the order um we can't and then it always
comes into the question on cost you know a lot of people don't understand the cost on appraisals
and like we we cannot dictate and tell appraisers you know what what they can charge on work right
that goes against a lot of stuff we're gonna get a lot of state violations if we're telling them
you know you have to take it this amount of money so you know the the reasonable and customary thing
comes up we have to make sure that what we're paying these appraisers is reasonable customary
you know against the vast majority of appraisers in that area and you can kind of use that to gauge
to see if an appraiser just happens to be charging for something on those lines but yeah man so
so we have to have checks and balances in place to make sure you know if we assign an order it's
getting followed up on in a timely you know reasonable amount of time to make sure it is
accepted if it's not accepted we start looking at other options and there's you know a high
percentage of orders where we're having to reach out to multiple appraisers to see if they will
take it on a decent amount of orders so i mean there's a lot of work that goes in even before
the file gets accepted right yeah there's a lot of that a lot of the verification piece is huge
too like you mentioned make sure everything lines up there i feel like i feel like the most important
part of the appraisal process for an amc is getting an order accepted like the clock starts
ticking yeah everybody once that appraisal is ordered and the faster you get that thing accepted
accepted and then our team goes on and makes sure that to help if necessary facilitate the scheduling
with the borrower or the point of contact and that can be a process in itself as well right because
dealing with people deal with schedules yeah sometimes you're dealing with an assistant to
an appraiser you know an office manager what have you the borrowers all have their own window of
opportunity everybody has you know people have jobs availabilities can sometimes be very limited
and we have to try and line those things up and it's not always that clean right speak about the
past two years on the schedule part's been the hardest part of the whole thing i mean oh yeah
yeah letting people into your house letting a stranger into your house yeah that threw a whole
new wrinkle oh yeah covid really screwed that up there's a lot of people who wanted nothing to do
with someone new whether they were wearing a mask or not come into their home or even be around it
and then also think about the safety of an appraiser the appraiser on on everybody does it
differently but i mean sometimes they'll have like inspection days to where like two or three days a
week they'll do all their inspections they could be at any up to six seven houses in one day so
think about all that exposure to that person and then they were at a house and taking that to the
next house and domino effect right right a couple days a week so think about their safety too i mean
the whole thing was a logistical nightmare for the past past couple years and if you weren't working
with somebody who as far as names he goes who you trust who has your back who's there for you and
kind of has an idea of what they're doing there has the manpower to to handle like the length of
time and order was taking as compared to you know no virus no no restrictions on nothing man you
were struggling you were struggling if you weren't working with someone that knew what they were
doing right i mean all the uh the regional guys uh and smaller players if you will they had you know
they had best intentions in trying to help facilitate some of the orders during that
time frame but sadly they didn't have the manpower to really stay on top of it when we were going
through an industry time or a market that was bigger and crazier than anyone we've ever seen
right for two straight years that was the time where manpower was probably the biggest
like the amount of touches an order gets the amount of times an order gets opened up
to do something whether it's checking up on status reaching out to an appraiser to see if
everything's going all right you know checking like the amount of touches per order i bet you
would probably double during that time easily so if you didn't have the people to check up on
orders you were struggling which which we do have and we still do have we still do have
a large staff i mean obviously times have been tough for everybody but we still have
we still have large staff here that's that's ready for more man bring it we got like on the orders
bring on the orders bring on the orders a little plug i mean we're ready we got stuff to do
what we are ready we got we got time for you call us email us text us dm
um so yeah i mean i mean do we even want to go down the rabbit hole of post completions you know
like like our job still isn't done after we've delivered the appraisal delivered all the necessary
documents our job still isn't done because underwriting still has to go through the file
underwriting could require some more comments or clarification on things the appraiser touched on
the report so we have to handle that process reaching back out to the appraiser and then
what if they don't agree with the appraisers final opinion oh that never happens does it uh
yeah what i mean we've been you know we're in a good position to where we've empowered a lot of
our a lot of our lender partners uh and brokers to you know place revisions that they're comfortable
replacing right but there's times where they need what little extra direction or help when it comes
to maybe a value rebuttal or they want some clarity on some things and that's where we come in
your the as the escalation and then we have to go to the appraiser and say all right well here's
they want some more explanation around this piece or they want you to consider these uh these other
comps because the lender feels that um they're a better representation of the market right
okay and so then we have to play more middleman more more back and forth between us than lo or
the or the underwriter um it's yeah that's that part is can be rough sometimes especially with
the way market values went up so much in the last year do you think we should change like i'm gonna
change my email signature to appraisal counselor oh yeah well you don't want to open up that can
or everybody's gonna we're the little man you know we're trying to make everybody feel good
do whole thing trying to be like okay yes i understand that you're not a fan of what's
happening here but this needs to be done all right i mean you're not a fan of the way this was done
but we're working on it like we're the appraisal counselors uh i think that's that's a wrap my
friend i think we've uh we've completely checked off every single box that we have for today
uh make sure to go out like us subscribe on our youtube channel ig facebook click it click the
little icon so we could take it tick tock mike's gonna be tick tocking maybe we'll do a tick tock
takeover you know i was thinking we should do that i was thinking we we need to get ourselves out
there the people want to see us the people want to see we should we should jump on these tick tock
ticker whatever it's called trends man i don't want the tick tock on my phone though man
well yeah it'll make me agree i'll do it on instagram all right all right we'll do that
and uh feel free to you guys start seeing more of us on a weekly basis you want to see they want to
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you