Influencing the BPO

[Tom Bukacek]

I was on a webinar about short sales recently when the speaker stated that he does not attend nor try to influence the BPO. He rationale is that he feels that if he tries to negatively impact the price of the appraisal by attending a BPO he is opening himself up to fraud charges if he turns around and sells quickly for a profit. Has anyone else heard this type of rationale before?

[Joel Owens]

If brokers and agents followed the bpo companies rules values would not be influenced at all.

Having said that there are brokers/agents who get kicked out of BPO companies for this very practice.

Most companies have an electronic signature form that we have to sign before submitting the finished BPO online.It says in a nutshell that we have not talked to,taken comps,relied upon ANY investor,contact,seller information etc. to influence our value and that we have inspected the property and pulled the comps ourselves.

BPO companies (mills) are really tightening down the standards as they are competing against other mills for large institutional orders.

The local to regional banks use brokers/agents more on a direct basis than the national banks that farm most bpo's out.