Obstacles to tech adoption & the question of appraisal bias | Clear Capital in the News

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Story by Georgia Kromrei for HousingWire

During a panel on residential appraisals, experts posed technology as a way to make appraisals more efficient and less subjective, as regulators take steps to understand and counteract bias.

But tech adoption in appraisal might face an uphill climb. Appraisers themselves — and the regulatory standards they are held to — stand in the way of tech adoption, said Lyle Radke, director of collateral policy at Fannie Mae, during a panel hosted by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

“Appraisers are not PhDs in mathematics,” Radke said. “They’re never going to be able to really articulate how a complex model works.”

The code which governs appraisers, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice, demands that if appraisers use data or mathematical models, Radke explained, they must know exactly where the data is from and understand how the model works.

“They’re scared to death of adopting new technologies because they’re afraid they’re going to have to explain it to somebody,” Radke said, of appraisers.

Some technological advancements, until recently, may have been too clunky or expensive to be within reach, said Kenon Chen, executive vice president of corporate strategy at appraisal management company Clear Capital. Now, many of those capabilities are built-in to the latest smartphones.

“The promise of photo, AI and machine learning for data being collected at the home is here, now, not a couple years from now,” said Chen. “There’s an opportunity for there to be less art and more science.”

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