Newz: Recent Executive Orders Affecting Appraisers, When Appraisers Take the Stand
June 12, 2026
What’s in This Newsletter (In Order, Scroll Down)
- LIA AD: A case of forgery
- Recent Executive Orders: Threat, Opportunity, or Both for Appraisers? By Kim Perotti, AXIS AMC
- $22.8 Million Aspen Home With Its Own Private Waterfall Feels Like a Real-Life Fairy Tale
- MY AD: If the Standards Are Uniform, Why Isn’t Your License? By Thaddus Dawson, Jr., CG
- When Appraisers Take the Stand By By David C. Wilkes, Esq., CRE, FRICS and Kevin M. Clyne, Esq., CRE
- Agents, Are You Using AI to Price Your Listings? By Tom Horn
- 10K Appraisers. Policy and Advocacy Day, By 10K Appraisers Foundation
- MBA: Mortgage applications increased 10.8 percent from one week earlier
Recent Executive Orders: Threat, Opportunity, or Both for Appraisers?
By Kim Perotti, a founding partner of AXIS AMC
Excerpts: In March 13, 2026, President Trump signed two Executive Orders that together amount to a clear message for our profession: build more houses, make credit easier, and get the valuation piece done faster and cheaper. We think it’s critically important that our industry discuss the implications.
The two orders are:
REMOVING REGULATORY BARRIERS TO AFFORDABLE HOME CONSTRUCTION
AND PROMOTING ACCESS TO MORTGAGE CREDIT
While they are not “about” appraisers, the Executive Orders will absolutely reshape the environment in which we work. Appraisers who treat these as background noise will find the ground shifting under their feet. Those who read them as a roadmap can pick their spots and come out stronger and, more importantly, help shape how they are put into practice.
REMOVING REGULATORY BARRIERS TO AFFORDABLE HOME CONSTRUCTION:
Faster, Cheaper Construction – What That Really Means for Your Desk
PROMOTING ACCESS TO MORTGAGE CREDIT: Faster, Cheaper Valuations – Where the Squeeze Shows Up – Second Order
The second order takes direct aim at how loans—and valuations—get done. The theme is unmistakable: streamline, digitize, and de-emphasize technical compliance.
For appraisers, here are the potential realities:
More alternative valuation products: Regulators are being encouraged to expand the use of AVMs, desktop, and hybrid appraisals and reduce full appraisal requirements on low-risk and small-balance loans. You should expect more hybrid and desktop requests and data-only products as well as a clearer dividing line between high-volume, low-margin work and complex, higher-risk assignments.
Pressure on fees and turn times: Agencies are being asked to set “clear appraisal timelines” and cut costs and therefore lenders will likely lean harder on speed and price whenever a waiver, AVM, or hybrid is allowed, and traditional assignment ordering will have to justify itself on risk grounds.
Changes in who can appraise and how: The order invites simplification of appraiser qualification requirements. Easier entry could mean more competitors and lenders may fill low-fee niches with less-experienced personnel or non-traditional vendors.
If your business is built primarily on simple, low-risk assignments, this is a direct competitive challenge.
Alignment of FHA and VA rules: HUD and VA are asked to align standards where risk is comparable, clarify what truly requires pre-closing repairs vs. what’s cosmetic, and expand post-closing repair flexibility.
That could change the frequency and scope of “subject to” conditions, reduce some friction and disputes around FHA/VA appraisals, and make your judgment about safety vs. cosmetic issues more visible and important.
In summation, this order calls for more technology and alternatives, more pressure on traditional appraisals, and more segmentation of valuation products by risk level.
A Clear Fork in the Road for Appraisers
Taken together, these two Executive Orders point in one direction: more volume, more complexity at the edges of the market, and more pressure to commoditize anything that looks “low risk.” Together they create a fork in the road for real estate appraisers:
If you stay in the lane of interchangeable, low-complexity assignments, you will feel the squeeze—from technology, from relaxed standards, and from new entrants.
If you lean into complexity—new construction, manufactured and modular, fringe markets, environmental and hazard issues, FHA/VA nuance—you become harder to replace, not easier.
This doesn’t mean abandoning efficiency or refusing alternative products. It means being fluent in hybrids and desktops so you can decide which work makes sense for you, positioning yourself as the expert when a lender can’t responsibly rely on an AVM or a waiver, and building documented expertise in the exact areas these orders will expand.
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My comments: Definitely worth reading. All about what this means for appraisers in detail. The best analysis for appraisers I have read about this executive order. The author is definitely an “insider” as she is Co President of AXIS, a long time AMC. When I wrote one of my first articles on AMCs, I interviewed AXIS.
