NAR Wrote the FHFA Regarding the Expansion of Appraisal Waivers

On December 10, 2024, NAR issued a comment letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) asking them to halt the recently announced expansion of the Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s (the GSEs) appraisal waiver programs in lieu of further analysis and public input.  

NAR policy supports independent valuations of real property performed by state credentialed appraisers as best practice, however in some low-risk situations, the amount of existing data and technological advances have led to the offer of appraisal waivers. When the risk level prompts the GSEs to require verification of that existing data, they are now offering inspection-based waivers, where a property data collection (PDC) is gathered and submitted to the GSEs. 

The expansion of these programs, slated to begin January 1, raises the eligibility for these products from 80% loan-to-value (LTV) to 90% LTV for appraisal waivers with no PDC and 97% LTV for inspection-based appraisal waivers. The inspection-based waiver program is fairly new, with little published data about the program or results thus far. More concerning is the silence from the GSEs on any efforts for data security or other avenues of systematic abuse of these programs.

Read the comment letter to the FHFA.