An Appraiser's View

Fannie Mae recently announced they are testing a change in the appraisal process which would involve having appraisers rely on a 3rd party data collector for the data elements they normally collect when they inspect a property. 
One can surmise the idea for this came about through a meeting between Fannie Mae and the CEO of a certain large property acquisition company who pioneered a similar idea during the last market downturn. The meeting happened at the suggestion of President Trump who is a huge proponent of technology and innovation. One can also then surmise that this is not the only change that is planned. When you consider that Blackstone used automated valuation models coupled with their property inspection data to make decisions on how much to pay for a foreclosed property, the intellectual partnership would surely be planning a similar move in the future. The only question that remains is will it actually work? 
I could bore you with the reasons it would work in tract homes that have typical updating, no deferred maintenance, no view, and typical locations, but would be marginally to highly inaccurate in all other instances, but instead let me state simply that data collected by 3rd parties that have zero liability is unreliable. Real Estate agents will stretch photo's to make a room look bigger, exaggerate views, quality, and condition just so they can get a buyer to look at a house. 3rd party photographers are more likely to get more work if the pictures they take make a house look better than what it is. And 3rd party data collectors are likely to miss many critical value details as they rush through a property because they have no liability for the missed item and they have 10 more inspections booked that day (using Blackstone's data collection model a 3rd party inspector will make $25-$35 per inspection, you do the math on how long they can spend on a property and still earn a living).  Based on this, in my opinion, the answer to whether this will work or not is "Not a chance." But that won't stop them from implementing it. 
Big Data is here. How it is used will not only determine the fate of the appraisal, real estate, and loan industries, it will determine the size of the next bubble, and the people affected by the fall when it bursts.