Appraiserville
(For earlier appraisal industry commentary, visit my old clunky REIC site.)
The Appraisal Foundation’s “Unbearable Whiteness of Being” Has Awakened The ASC Tiger
With the near-total lack of diversity in the leadership across the Appraisal Foundation, and unprofessional actions in the past year such as the
bat-**** crazy letter, the knee-jerk temporary expansion of USPAP for one year without advanced notice to all the stakeholders based on “COVID”, the dishonest effort to mislead Congresswoman Waters to initiate an audit of everyone in the appraisal regulatory process EXCEPT the Appraisal Foundation itself, which is the actual player in the sandbox that needs scrutiny may have been the cause of this:
[click image for web page]
Wow. This is the part that stands out:
The goal of the review is to ensure that USPAP and the AQB Criteria do not encourage or systematize bias, and consistently support or promote fairness, equity, objectivity and diversity in both appraisals and the training and credentialing of appraisers.
That’s going to be very awkward for TAF to explain how:
- there is nearly zero diversity on their technical boards for the past thirty years
- they cultivated the appraisal profession to be dead last in the diversity of 400 occupations tracked by BLS with 96.5% of appraisers being white
- the head of the diversity committee is a middle-aged white guy
- the Ethics Rule is poorly written, seemingly giving appraisers leeway to use race data to make adjustments
- AO16 was written
The Appraisal Foundation’s Diversity Survey Isn’t Credible But Is Laughable
TAF’s Diversity Survey touts its high participation rate of 4,714 (7.4%) of the 64,000 email survey who actually completed the survey. As someone who works with data for a living (I’m an appraiser, after all), look at the following chart. Does something in it jump out at you?
Step back and absorb this logic:
According to the survey, 77.6% of appraisers who answered the question: “With which racial and ethnic groups do you identify?” identified as white.
So an institution that, according to federal government, has the least diversity of the 400 occupations they track, sends
an opinion survey to appraisers who are predominantly white to ask them questions about diversity?
This is not a credible approach for research. Anyone with any experience with data knows that survey data is incredibly unreliable and the lowest form of information.
My goodness.
Appraisers Who Think They Are Fighting The Good Fight Have Missed The Point
To my appraiser friends and colleagues who have written heart-felt screeds about how appraisers are observers of the market and not creators of value as well as the stunning lack of understanding of what our appraisal profession actually does in that Brookings Institute study of a few years ago, you are absolutely missing the broader point here
and it’s serious – as serious as it gets.
Our industry has no diversity. That’s a fact and leadership in our profession such as TAF had no clue until the past year when many of us took them to task for it. They still don’t get it based on their recent actions.
When you say things like, there is no proof that appraisers are racist, you don’t have a leg to stand on because organizations like TAF exist, organizations that are willfully blind to reality, no matter how much you believe what you are saying. Take a break from talking about it from the appraisers’ on-the-ground perspective and think of it from the perspective of the public and users of our services.
Our role involves public trust. Over 30 years of systemic, identifiable, and un-addressed bias and racism sweeps us from the realm of public trust. The public has no trust in us and it’s only now that the massive institutions that hold our future in their hands are waking up to it. We are on the wrong side of history, and our unchallenged leadership has placed and kept us there.
For the past 30+ years, the institution responsible for our standards and entrance into the profession has been dominated by middle-aged white guys (like me).
From the public trust perspective, the very basis of our profession, this is classic systemic racism defined. It’s not a statement about you individually, it’s about the system we came through. That’s what needs to be corrected.
And those news stories about discrimination in valuation won’t stop coming because they are like shooting fish in a barrel. That’s because as an industry, we can’t defend what is nearly a whites-only – and dominantly male – environment. We need to fix TAF now unless you want to be reading “appraisers are racists” stories forever and see our profession marginalized further, even eliminated.
