In August of 2023 Cindy Chance was named the new CEO of the Appraisal Institute. About a year later, in September 2024 John Udelhofen was named as interim CEO, replacing Ms. Chance. So in one short year, Ms. Chance was out.

What did she do to be terminated so quickly? The A.I. board that fired her isn’t saying, (which is appropriate). Rumor has it that she wanted to change the A.I. board in some way, and the board did not want change. But who knows for sure.

Her termination has set off a firestorm in the appraisal community with lots of appraisers still upset that A.I. did not better represent the industry when the NY Times accused appraisers of bias toward minorities. The NY Times published an article in August of 2022 that said an appraiser undervalued there property by about $280,000 because of their race.

This accusation took on a life of its own, with some arguing that minorities have less generational wealth than whites because of biased appraisals. The issue percolated to the top of government, with Vice President Harris recently announcing new actions “designed to root out racial bias from the home appraisal industry”. Harris was quoted as saying “for generations, many people of color have been prevented from taking full advantage of the benefits of home ownership. Today that legacy of inequity persists in part in the home appraisal system”.

With such a hurricane shit storm directed at the appraisal industry, no appraisal group was going to be able to stem the flow of bad publicity and consequences. And to hold Cindy to that, or complain that the Institute did not protect appraisers from the consequences, is unrealistic.