Appraisers' Free Forum

<snip>Perry "Pat" Turner, an appraiser in the Richmond, Va., area, said pressure to inflate values is so widespread that "it amounts to organized fraud by loan officers based on their need to generate fees and close deals, and then pass the loans on to Wall Street" where they get packaged into the mortgage bonds that are now experiencing heavy default rates and losses to investors.

"And they all think they're never going to get caught," Turner said.

A national survey of 1,200 appraisers last year by October Research, publisher of the industry newsletter Valuation Review, found that nine out of 10 appraisers said they've recently been intimidated or otherwise pressured to raise valuations on homes - a 64 percent increase in complaints since a similar survey in 2003.

When appraisers refused to cooperate with demands to fluff the numbers, according to the study, two out of three of them lost the client's business altogether; nearly half did not get paid for the work they had performed.<snip>

In a statement, Washington Mutual said it was both "surprised and disappointed by the allegations," and has suspended business with eAppraiseIT pending its own investigation of the matter.