So George,
What then prompted this poll?
As you state, you do very little res lending work. This poll sure wasn't directed to, nor did it attract, many CGs or the MAIs. Being a USPAP instructor, with so many years into the industry, why now, question competency when it has been a part of USPAP for so long????
I wouldn't expect you to ask how to adjust for a basement, as by now, I just accept you understand the basics, and competency is one of those.
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I have nothing to hide here. (and I am also not questioning the necessity of performing competently)
What prompted the poll was I got a call from Danny a few days back where he wanted a sounding board for a training session he was walking into with his own people, and we were kicking some ideas around on the topic. We've done that many times over the years, often about responses to the exposure drafts or about legal cases or brainstorming about training materials and approaches and so on. This is not a particularly unusual occurrence.
He brought up a couple things I hadn't thought about in a long time since back when I was teaching review courses, and I came back with a couple non-res examples of what he was talking about that hadn't occurred to him. We bounced a few ideas off of each other - including some talking points - and he went and did his thing. The conversation got me to thinking about it and some additional tangents that we hadn't discussed came to mind.
So yeah, he brought up a question about how we go about distinguishing between what is reportable at the outset of the assignment and in the cert under the COMPETENCY RULE that got me to thinking about the topic. He didn't ask me to bring the "geographic" angle up in the Forum, he didn't know I was going to bring it up, and he certainly didn't know I was going to put the pitch to people based on what they thought their own abilities are vs asking what they think most appraisers can do.
But hey, if the conspiracy to manipulate theory appeals to you I do not mind indulging you and will volunteer to register as a Russian bot and a hostile (or apathetic) agent to your business interests. I've been called that before, including when the HVCC broke and I was telling everyone that the loan salesmen should never have been allowed control the appraisers. Not that my willingness to step into the breach will change any aspect of the "competency" issue itself.
That issue existed before any of us thought about it in those terms and will continue whether we think about what we're doing or not. IRL a lot more data and resources have come online since I started appraising and the results have been that appraisers are capable of looking at and considering more information than ever before - on their own and without calling the County to inquire about zoning designations and what they mean, without asking a broker how many DOMs that listing ran or what the initial list prices were or seeing where the property lines are on an assessor map overlay in the aerials or seeing a series of street pics in Google Maps or overheads in Google Earth that go back 10 or 20 years so we can see when a building was added.
I didn't create the question of whether we need to reconsider what it takes to return the competent appraisal in the data age; all I did was bring it up within the context of current events.
And FTR, I have previously completed number of no-look appraisals, rental surveys, land sales analyses and HBU analyses on non-residential properties for clients in the past; and I've done so without the slightest fear of some 3rd party moving the goalpost on me after the fact. So my end of the business is not isolated from these developments and I DON'T think the SFR appraisers are getting singled out for abuse here.
