No appraisal loans?

I think the discussion you reference might have been about buyer broker rebates but I can't seem to find it either.

When I put a line of credit on my second home about 10 years ago, the bank did a "drive-by" appraisal which was computer generated. I got a copy of it and it was a joke. These "non-appraisals" sound even worse and will invite much fraud.

Every time there is a market correction what follows is a bunch of hand-wringing about tightening appraisal standards to prevent the frauds which happened in the previous bubble. So now that we are apparently in a new bubble, the solution is to do away with appraisals altogether?
It seems to me to be the equivalent of putting a penny in the fuse box and saying "the machine operators are good people and know what they're doing, they wouldn't do anything which would be a hazard" even when their last two buildings burned to the ground due to electrical fires.

If appraisals were replaced by serious due diligence of loan applications, I would not have a big problem with it. And I was an appraiser for 10 years. Appraisals are not the be all and end all of good underwriting. But they exist as a check on bad underwriting and unscrupulous lenders.

While I don't disagree with that, I think that any time "somebody else's money" is being loaned (like in the case where guarantees are being made by quasi-governmental agencies), there needs to be an impartial third party doing some sort of checking on the loan.