Just curious about trainees

[PropertyEconomics]

Sorry about the full quote...I'd delete the parts that are not relevant to my question, but that appears to be frowned upon.

I would like for you to expand upon that - because frankly I happen to agree with you. Others have stated that there comes a point where you know enough to very successfully get yourself into trouble.

I am approaching (actually exceeded) my 3,000 hour threshold and will be submitting everything to the state for my license. I feel I have learned a lot and overall am a very competent appraiser - but I realize that there's a lot more out there to know and the only way for me to gain that knowledge is to stay with a good mentor.

2 years? Is that fair? Fair is what I am striving for/struggling with.

Is the 50/50 split fair? I tend to think so. After all, it was/is my mentor's client base which took years to build.

I should mention that I have ABSOLUTELY no thoughts about leaving my current employer. He is an amazing man. Incredibly smart. A wonderful sense of humor. What's better is that he allows me to ask questions (for instance, why are we doing it this way when last time you said to do it that way?) and he takes the time to explain the whole thing to me and never gets upset or frustrated. He has afforded me the opportunity to work on some pretty cool stuff.

On the other hand, from day one I have always made sure that I was paying for myself assuming a 50/50 split. I do not want to be a further burden than I already am, if you know what I mean.

Overall, I am trying to figure out what is fair. I know each situation is different. I fiercely strive to be fair.

I am not entertaining the thought of opening up someplace else. I picked this place for a reason.

I recognize that he should be compensated....my question is more abstract in nature. What is the bar? Where does fair then become generous.

Two years? Or is it more of a question of the complexity of the assignments and the amount of input needed to complete it competently?

Somebody....everybody...please help me to define fair.

Amy .. I would say you have a pretty ideal situation. I think honestly that fairness should be discussed between yourself and your mentor. I find it interesting, to your credit and in proof of my point, even to this day you ask him questions and why you are doing it this way when you did it that way last time. Its a continual learning process.
I cant tell you how long to stay just as I cant tell him to give you a higher percentage or to make you a partner in the business. Perhaps its a good conversation to have with him.
I have known many that have trained good appraisers only to let them leave and become their competition. The mentors were at fault in these situations in my opinion. I would have given them a small part of the business (or sold it to them under acceptable terms) and formed a team. One that continues to strive ethically, one that sees the advantages of everyone working on the same page toward greater client service and building upon what the company already has.
I do hope that you and your mentor can come to an agreement as to what is fair to you both. It sounds like not only is he a good mentor but you have been a good student. You should both be rewarded ... and I personallly think thats possible.

And for what its worth, please feel free to delete any parts of anything of mine youd like to quote. As long as you dont take it out of context we are fine .. If you do .. I will let you know. hahahahaha

Best of luck to you.

 

[Stone]

Laughing with you Mr. Stone.

Good one...


Sincerely,

I re-constructed your words to what I'm sure you really meant.:new_smile-l:

 

[Metamorphic]

01) 2000 hours is WAY too much time. I've got a buddy who flies for the airlines. When he gets a new copilot the guy sometimes has only 500-600 hours of flight time in his log book. If you're engaged in a systematic, quality teaching program you shouldn't need 2000 hours to learn to do this job competently; its just not that hard a thing. we agree .. 2000 hours is the wrong amout of time .. it should be 5000 hours. Give me a break its too long .. if you dont want to put in the time .. you shouldnt be in the profession. simple as that .. its not too long its not enough. At the end of 2 years you know enough about appraisal to be dangerous .. dont believe me ... look at the state of the US Housing market. Not all our fault .. your right. But many of the problems are the fault of young snot nose appraisers who dont have a clue.

If you're doing the same crappy 6 hour tract home appraisal over and over again for 2000 hours or 5000 thousand hours you'll never be trained. If somebody's actually training you and teaching you to do good technical appraising and demanding that you articulate and document your work in a rigorous fashion, you'll be making competent value judgments well before 2000 hours. Sure, you wont see everything in 2000 hours, but that's why they have the competency rule.

2)The appraisal education system doesn't teach you to do appraisals, and there's no check on the quality of the training you receive from the trainer. So what happens is that trainees become state mandated slave labor for the black hat appraisers who are willng to use them un-ethically and who will become more black hat appraisers with no skills. The system that's supposed to guarantee competence is now insuring incompetence. Fire yourself .. if you find you are working for a blackhatter .. simply leave. Its your choice .. you are not a slave unless you want to be.

I dont need to fire myself. I spent a year finding a ethical appraiser to train me. But all the other leads I had before I found this guy were of the "you'll get your hours but he wont teach you anything or pay you anything, and he'll burn up your car sending you all over the state" variety. What I'm trying to figure out now is how I'm going to make a living at this eventually when I'm in competetion with people that can turn out 3 appraisals a day for 200 a piece. What's the vig for being a good appraiser?

3) There's no requirement to take on trainees. If the state mandates 2000 hours from the trainees, simple mass balances suggests that people coming in to renew their license should show that they've spent some time training. Its been my experience in life that you never really learn a subject until you have to teach it. Allowing an appraiser to show 100 hours of year of training in lew of some ammount of CE would be a good start I think. Its my business I will train if I so choose. Simple as that.
There's a difference between forcing you to train and providing an incentive to train. There's also a legal requirement that state licensing procedures not be a "barrier to competition". The original guys that got state of California geologist certification by grandfathering wrote a set of rules that resulted in a test that had about a 10% pass rate. I knew smart talented geologist who spent months studying who failed year after year. Eventually the state got sued and had to change the test so that it was reasonably passable. The current orea system that requires lots of training but no trainers could be viewed as a barrier. And it would be hard to argue for the current system based on its effectiveness as you have noted.

4) There needs to be a graduated level of responsability for trainees. Your signature shouldent be worthless one day and gold the next. Perhaps a system where after 200 hours trainees can shoot comps inependantly, then after 1000 then can do the field insp on the subject independantly, etc etc. If you pushed this system as law such that FNMA and the AMC's had to abide by it you would make trainees profitable for trainers who arent willing to break the rules as well as the bad guys. Its hard as a trainee to make money for a guy if he has to be joint at the hip with you and duplicate all your work. If the trainee could independantly and legall sholder some portion of the burden an the liability it would go a long way towards making the trainee system workable, ethical, and profitable for everybody. You shoulder all of the burden and liability. If you dont think you do then you are mistaken. I agree with you that one day you shoudlnt be lead and the next gold .. that is wrong. I couldnt agree more. If you dont want your guy to duplicate all your work .. learn to do it better. I think your big issue is profitability for yourself .. sounds like you are working in the wrong place.

The rules my guy works under says he has to go on all the inspections and is responsible for the final product. He may save a few hours with the form filling I do for him, but he still has to check every box because his is the only signature that matters. I work my *** of to make the reports as perfect as possible, but he's still going to check every fact because he's ethical.

5) USPAP and FNMA, for all their rules and regulations, havent manged to legislate competence. Such is the nature of government. That just a life lesson I suppose. Its a life lesson that is learned over and over and over.

6) There needs to be a wall between the people trying to do the deal and the guy that's responsible for stopping it if it doesnt make financial sense. Actually providing the appriaser with the number its going to take to make the loan and requiring the appraiser to analyze the transaction as part of the appraisal has to be the stupidist thing ever. Its like mandating that every garden has Eve and the apple. Being a "noob" you wouldnt understand the old days when the borrower was also appraised. If they were not credit worthy they didnt get the loan. In the old days the banker knew who the number hitter was, multiplied their value by some factor they felt comfortable with and moved on. Now there are so many number hitters its pathetic. I review every contract I get, for many reasons, and never to hit a number. If you cant review a contract and not hit its number .. this is not the profession for you. Its simple .. either you have ethics or you dont.

In my old profession I've been leaned on by the best of them and I always stuck to my guns on the facts and technical issues. And this was with real money on the line, not some brokers piddly comission or a $600 apprasial fee. But just because you and I value our reputation more than any particular assignment or client doesnt mean everybody does. Why should the system be set up make that temptation manditory? Its not THAT useful a piece of information. Seems like part of the drive towards AMC's is motivated by separating the appraisers from the do-the-deal pressure. Better, I think, to do that directly by not faxing over the contract and allow the appraiser to keep 100% of the appraisial fee.

0987654321

 

[Stone]

Sorry about the full quote...I'd delete the parts that are not relevant to my question, but that appears to be frowned upon.

Not at all. It is done all the time. What is frowned upon is actually changing the words in the quote. Particularly when the edited version is overly "re-constructed".

 

[Amy Grande]

I thank you for your responses.

Stone, on another board I frequent, they call that post *******ization.

I understand the difference now. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Stone]

I thank you for your responses.

Stone, on another board I frequent, they call that post *******ization.

I understand the difference now. Thanks for the clarification.

No sweat.

It sounds like you have a good situation. A good supervisor is invaluable. A good relationship is beneficial to both of you and you seem to get the concept that there is always a lot more to learn. I know for me there is, anyway.

Good luck.

 

[Greenback]

I re-constructed your words to what I'm sure you really meant.:new_smile-l:

Mr. Stone,

I don't mind at all, if you feel like changing my words to your liking.

Sincerely,

 

[Michigan CG]

That would be really funny to see an newly online course grad try and do some eminent domain or conservation easement work. Better yet maybe they could take a course on litigation and become an expert...I would pay to watch that cross examination.

I too would pay to see that.

1) 2000 hours is WAY too much time. I've got a buddy who flies for the airlines. When he gets a new copilot the guy sometimes has only 500-600 hours of flight time in his log book. If you're engaged in a systematic, quality teaching program you shouldn't need 2000 hours to learn to do this job competently; its just not that hard a thing.

I am not sure I can say it better than PE.....but I can certainly tell you this, 2,000 hours is not nearly enough time. I think that CR candidates should have 3-4,000 hours. It gives you time to experience odd assignments, get further education and be a more competent appraiser. Theoretically you can amass 2,000 hours in one year, sit out for a year and then become certified....(isn't the required time 2,500 hours..I dunno, still not long enough).

If you are doing commercial I have seen opinions about 10 year requirements, and most say a minimum of 5 years as an opinion.

I am approaching (actually exceeded) my 3,000 hour threshold and will be submitting everything to the state for my license. I feel I have learned a lot and overall am a very competent appraiser - but I realize that there's a lot more out there to know and the only way for me to gain that knowledge is to stay with a good mentor.

I believe I saw that you were going to take the CG test. 3,000 hours is not nearly enough unless you want to only appraise the most basic of commercial properties. But you have some very good points. Commercial is a total different world than residential, and it is a never ending learning cycle.

Is the 50/50 split fair? I tend to think so. After all, it was/is my mentor's client base which took years to build.

It is depending on what your mentor pays. Are you an employee? Do you get any benefits? I have seen commercial splits (licensed commercial appraisers) of 40-75% depending on the benefits and status of the appraiser.

......you'll be making competent value judgments well before 2000 hours.....

No, you are still too green and there are many situations that will come up in those first 2-5,000 hours that you have never seen before. It is called learning.

 

[Metamorphic]

There's a big difference between being competent to do "many" appraisal assignments and being competent to do "any" assignment.

A person should not have to be universally competent to make a living as an appraiser.

Plus, you're talking like some number that a legislator pulls out of their rear and puts into law will actually have a effect on competency or more importantly, the willingness to act ethically. Quite frankly, the more you increase the hour requirements the more you're going to invite hour padding and nepotism.

Better you should move to a performance based standard, like the pilots license examination. Pick up an inspector in the morning, go out and measure a house and appraise its value with the instructor looking over your shoulder and asking you questions.

 

[George Hatch]

The minimum time frames established by the Appraiser Qualifications Board are in place because they think that's the time it takes the average person to get to the point where they can trusted not to mess up too badly on those assignments. It's the benchmark we use for the masses.

Sure, there are some individuals who can get to that point of reliability significantly faster, just as there are some individuals for whom it takes a lot longer. But on average I'd say the 2,000 hours is reasonable. I mean, if the only amount of supervision a trainee really gets is limited to a signature then sure, we're going to have some problems from both the supervisor and their trainee; and increasing the hours of that type of supervision would be a waste of time anyway.

The new requirements were intended to curtail the trend of very junior appraisers running trainees, and to curtail the large puppy mills. And yes, in the beginning it surely will cut down on the numbers of trainees coming through the pipeline. So those appraisers whose business model consisted of sitting on their asses while they signed for the work that 5 or 6 or 20 unsupervised trainees are going to have to find a different way - nobody is going to get rich trying to run 3 trainees at a time.

There have been a few supervisors who have been doing the right thing all along - these requirements won't touch them and the opportunities they've been providing will continue to be available. Of course, we often don't hear about them because up until now they've been the minority.

However, once the sweatshops have been reduced in number and size that will free up a good number of assignments that will get redistributed among the other appraisers. And, once the business cycle returns to boom times those appraisers will get busy. Rising demand for services will increase fees and make feasible the idea of expansion, albeit at a more moderate pace.

The sweatshop opportunities will be curtailed - deal with it. They've been a cancer in our midst and nobody has a right to lament their demise. If anything, it will increase the number of legitimate opportunities for trainees as time goes forth. I think that the "paying for training" fad will pass because those appraisers who really want to run the large fee shops will have to figure out how to answer the retention question, and that solution can't involve abusing their trainees and turning them into abusers. More training opportunities will come up when fees come up as a result of shortages. Not before.

I'll bet my last dollar that it will be even harder to get in by 2028 than it is now. If you make it in and you last that long, I doubt you'll retain your current opinions about the downsides to reducing the sweatshops.

Regardless, these requirements were established by the AQB - none of us here have any say over the matter. If you have a problem with the AQBs criteria then you should take it up with them. In the meantime, the current system is the one you've got to deal with, so deal with it.