2 APPRAISERS SETTLE CHARGES.Byline: Gregory J. Wilcox Wilcox may refer to: Place names in the United States
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Two San Fernando Valley San Fernando Valley Valley, southern California, U.S. Northwest of central Los Angeles, the valley is bounded by the San Gabriel, Santa Susana, and Santa Monica mountains and the Simi Hills. area real estate appraisers have resigned their licenses and agreed to pay $10,000 fines to settle charges they engaged in unethical unethical said of conduct not conforming with professional ethics. practices, the state said Wednesday. Grant Cooper of Woodland Hills was alleged to have ``grossly overvalued'' eight homes in the Valley by using inappropriate comparable sales information, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. the state Office of Real Estate Appraisers. Those transactions resulted in losses of more than $1 million to lenders, the state said. The majority of the homes were in Woodland Hills and appraised at prices ranging between $500,000 and $600,000, about twice their actual market value, said John Brenan, chief of licensing and enforcement for the state appraisers office. Cooper was accused of participating in a series of so-called flip transactions in which one party pays the going price for a home and then immediately sells or transfers the property at an exaggerated price. The property is appraised at the higher price, a loan is made based on the appraisal and the seller nets a big profit. Buyers of seven parcels defaulted on their loans. Cooper said he settled the state's case without admitting any wrong-doing because of the expense involved in fighting the charges. ``I've been in this for 15 years and had an excellent reputation,'' Cooper said. ``Basically what happened was that there was some kind of situation going on with the brokers where they were inventing things about the borrowers in terms of credit worthiness, and I got caught in the middle of this quagmire.'' His attorney, Randall Miller, said that settling the charges was a prudent course of action since a lawsuit lawsuit: see procedure; tort. resulted from the matter. In the other case, Erich Martirosian of Glendale was accused of performing appraisals for which his compensation was directly related to the property's appraised value An appraised value (USA) or mortgage valuation (Australia) pertains to the assessed value of real property in the opinion of a qualified appraiser or valuer. It is usually used as a pre-qualification & risk-based pricing factor related to the issuance of mortgage loans by a , defrauding clients by forging another appraiser's signature and performing appraisals for an interested party. In some cases, the state said that Martirosian acted as a real estate broker, loan broker and appraiser A person selected or appointed by a competent authority or an interested party to evaluate the financial worth of property. Appraisers are frequently appointed in probate and condemnation proceedings and are also used by banks and real estate concerns to determine the market in the same transaction. He could not be reached for comment. A phone number supplied by the state had been disconnected. |
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