Friday, April 15, 2005

"Greed Knows No Bounds"

The courageous Mr. Perkins at Realty Times continues to call it as he sees it, with this editorial on appraisal fraud. "In San Diego, Stephen G. Bishop, turned his appraiser's license back into California's Office of Real Estate Appraisal after being fired thrice consecutively because he refused to inflate residential real estate appraisals."

It's a must read with great links. Here are some excerpts, "The regulation of the appraisal industry can only be described as engineered to facilitate fraud..'State appraisal agencies have ludicrously small staffs and budgets, indicating that there was never any intent to police the industry from within,' says Bishop."

"A growing real estate underworld is discovering there's money to be had in real estate and an unprecedented level of organized crime has surfaced."

10 Comments:

At 12:49 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

good quote
"I see deals die constantly because listing agents are pricing houses according to a supposed market increase. I am livid at the state of the market in my area... and, in my opinion, it will lead to an area-wide crash in the next two or three years if something doesn't change," Warburton said."

 
At 1:25 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

A free society can not survive if the people won't control their own behavior. A society can survive a small number of moral deviants, but when everyone is chasing the fast easy buck there isn't much that can be done. There is no way you can raise enough tax money to keep an eye on everyone. There are a lot of people in this real estate bubble who know better but have sold out to the dollar god.

 
At 1:29 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Seriously, THIS IS THE BEST BLOG ON THE WEB! In fact, this is the only that I've ever bothered to post on. Ben, I just want to thank you what you are doing.

 
At 3:17 PM, Blogger Ben Jones said...

(There is no way you can raise enough tax money to keep an eye on everyone)

I agree. What defines a profession is that it regulates itself. That requires ethics, peer review, etc. When I was studying accounting, we were debating whether audit and consulting could be done for the same firm, and professional skeptisism maintained. Enron provided the answer to that one.

I would like to see the appraisers come out of this with the courage to really put together a new professional set of guidelines, and stick to them.

To the last anon, thanks, it means a lot.

 
At 8:09 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

love the blog.. i understand how it feels to be the bearer of bad news- i run the site "fuckedgoogle dot com" as well as "fuckedrealestate dot com"

both represent clear and present dangers.. google to the nasdaq and the tech bubble, and real estate fraud to our entire economy.

it's amazing how all lessons are forgotten within 2 years, no matter how bad the teacher. (enron, dot.coms, etc)

keep up the great work! your site rocks!

 
At 8:40 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

so im wondering why you deleted my last comment about fuckedrealestate dot com?

dont want the competition?

 
At 10:57 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"so im wondering why you deleted my last comment about fuckedrealestate dot com?

dont want the competition?"

Maybe he just want's to keep this blog the "family" real estate bubble blog.

 
At 11:30 PM, Blogger Ben Jones said...

For the record, I didn't delete anything. I have only deleted one post in 6 months. Google must have done it.

Thanks for commenting. Sometimes Blogger slows down a post, so check back. BTW, blogger makes me crazy! Opps. Will that get blocked?

 
At 8:34 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

BTW, Ben,

How long have you been running this thing and have you noticed any increased traffic recently?

Dave

 
At 9:20 AM, Blogger Ben Jones said...

Dave,
(How long have you been running this thing and have you noticed any increased traffic recently?)

This blog was started in December, but I had other blogs before that. I saw more traffic after I got linked on Curbed.com.

 

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