WaMu Blacklisted Real Estate Appraiser For Refusing To "Play Their Games," Says Suit

A Washington Post story appearing in the Chicago Daily Herald reports:

• [A] California appraiser has filed suit against the country's largest thrift institution, Washington Mutual Bank, charging that she was blacklisted for refusing to provide favorable appraised values despite declining market conditions. The suit by Jennifer Wertz comes just two months after the state of New York sued an appraisal management company, First American eAppraiseIT, for allegedly giving in to pressure from Washington Mutual to inflate property values for loan applications -- thereby contributing to ongoing mortgage market losses. EAppraiseIT and LSI, a unit of Fidelity National Information Services, were also cited in Wertz's suit as contractors to WaMu.

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• Pamela Crowley, an appraiser in Cape Canaveral, Fla., said the California suit should be a siren in the night for lenders. "They have threatened and taken so much business away from competent and ethical appraisers who refused to play their games that now we have nothing to lose. We are going to fight, and we're going to tell everybody what's been going on."

For more, see Suit blows whistle on bank-influenced appraisals.