Opinion ID: 1931243
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Appraisers

Text: Appellee and Cross-Appellant John P. Morgan, Jr., is a real estate appraiser. He had been approved by the FHA to appraise properties for FHA-insured loans. He regularly performed appraisals for American Skycorp, including thirty-two of the properties in this case. In May 2001, the FHA removed him from its list of approved appraisers based upon one of the appraisals involved in this case. Appellee Michael Almony is a real estate appraiser and the sole shareholder of Appellee Almony Appraisal Services, Inc. [13] Almony was approved by the FHA to appraise properties with loans that would be insured by the FHA. Almony had performed appraisals for American Skycorp since 1998. He appraised two properties involved in this case, 4106 Harris Avenue and 4230 Seidel Avenue. In December 2000, the FHA removed him from its list of approved appraisers for one year based upon Almony's appraisal of 4106 Harris Avenue. The Division and the appraisers present conflicting versions about the role of the appraisers in this case. The Division depicts the appraisers as crucial players in the flipping scheme, deceiving the FHA and the purchasers by artificially inflating the values of the homes and hiding the fact that Shpritz recently had purchased the properties he was selling. The appraisers view the Division's charges against them as a baseless maneuver to strengthen its case against the other parties by presenting a picture of a coherent scheme. The Division relied primarily upon the reports and testimony of Robert Hinton to support its allegations against the appraisers. Hinton, who was received by ALJ Spencer as an expert in the field of appraising property, reviewed the appraisals by Morgan and Almony at issue in this case. For each property, he conducted either a field review or a desk review. In each review, Hinton inspected the exterior of the subject and comparable properties, while in field reviews, Hinton also inspected the interior of the subject property. [14] The Division alleged that the appraisers inflated the values of the properties, enabling Shpritz to sell the properties at artificially inflated prices and burdening consumers with high mortgages. The Division accused the appraisers of three types of misrepresentations in their completion of the Uniform Residential Appraisal Report for the properties: (1) inaccurately representing that the appraised properties had not been sold in the preceding year; (2) choosing unrepresentative properties as comparable sales; and (3) inflating the predominant values of properties in the neighborhood. In their testimony, Morgan and Almony each generally denied any misrepresentations. In response to Hinton's reports and testimony, they presented appraising as an art, not a science, and claimed that any discrepancies between their appraisals and Hinton's reports were based on the inevitable differences between any two professionals' appraisals of a property. Morgan and Almony conceded that they might have performed less than A work on a given appraisal, but asserted that they did not make any misrepresentations.