Nationwide median appraisal fees

With new FHA guidelines requiring participating lenders to ensure that appraisers are paid "reasonable and customary" fees, a la mode, inc. recently developed an online resource called the Appraisal Fee Reference (AFR). Using the data from verified and validated appraisals, the Appraisal Fee Reference reports the median appraisal fees for each of the 3,221 counties and districts in the fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam.

For compliance with HUD's new 2010 RESPA rules and the revised Good Faith Estimate, the AFR gives a lender a defensible basis for estimating closing costs on a GFE for loans using independent fee appraisers. As for the actual report, the February 2010 edition of the AFR reveals that the most expensive counties to get an appraisal were not in the major cities. Instead, counties in Alaska, Hawaii and Wyoming dominated the 50 most expensive locations.

Of the locations with the lowest fees, appraisers in Ohio were represented disproportionately, with 18 of the bottom 50 slots being taken by counties in the state. Four nearby states -- Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Illinois, and Wisconsin -- also had three to four counties each in the bottom 50.