Appraising is like a minimum wage job.

[Zoe]

Rural can get wicked quick. I feel your pain.

 

[Zoe]

Sounds like you had a cookie cutter rural. LOL

You know why I drive a car that gets like 35 mpg? I would like one that got 40 mpg like my first car. It was straight shift though. I like the automatic.

As long as it has A/C I am good with it. This one has other features. I can put in GPS and other things with little touch screen in front. Listen to news or whatever between stops.

That feature is worth 5 mpg.

 

[Zoe]

Gas prices are all over the place in Memphis. Some are like $2.99/gal. Some are like $2.52/galllon.

It don't hurt as much when you get 35 mpg. The little car don't hold many gallons of gas. I take tax deduction on mileage. That helps too.

The tax deduction don't care whether you get 40 mpg or 10 mpg on gas. It is same deduction per mile.

 

[Essexfenwick]

The problem is the volume of deals has been unusually low for 3 years. This is the time to get an SRA if you plan to stay in residential appraisal. The certification has been watered down to worth nothing more than when there was no licensing. Appraisal is the easiest job for good money with fairly minimal effort if you set up correctly. You need a good assistant and contractors / appraisal partners for marketing and the ability to serve your customers maintaining a good lifestyle. When busy you need to make investments religiously including rental properties for income in slow times . You can build easy life and become moderately wealthy. Everybody tells me I look very young for my age and I tell them I had an easy job my whole career.

 

[Zoe]

The problem is the volume of deals has been unusually low for 3 years. This is the time to get an SRA if you plan to stay in residential appraisal. The certification has been watered down to worth nothing more than when there was no licensing. Appraisal is the easiest job for good money with fairly minimal effort if you set up correctly. You need a good assistant and contractors / appraisal partners for marketing and the ability to serve your customers maintaining a good lifestyle. When busy you need to make investments religiously including rental properties for income in slow times . You can build easy life and become moderately wealthy. Everybody tells me I look very young for my age and I tell them I had an easy job my whole career.

Wealth and money are two different things.

I don't mean to be mean. They have different meanings.

Don't look at the whole structure and biased interests in the whole system. Just say go get an SRA.

People will choke if you say that.

 

[alebrewer]

The problem is the volume of deals has been unusually low for 3 years. This is the time to get an SRA if you plan to stay in residential appraisal. The certification has been watered down to worth nothing more than when there was no licensing. Appraisal is the easiest job for good money with fairly minimal effort if you set up correctly. You need a good assistant and contractors / appraisal partners for marketing and the ability to serve your customers maintaining a good lifestyle. When busy you need to make investments religiously including rental properties for income in slow times . You can build easy life and become moderately wealthy. Everybody tells me I look very young for my age and I tell them I had an easy job my whole career.

Can you cite even one of your clients that require an SRA for inclusion on their panel?

 

[Essexfenwick]

Can you cite even one of your clients that require an SRA for inclusion on their panel?

I get legal work that desires it. I get work from direct clients that have designated dept heads. Also from clients like Morgan Stanley, Goldman.
I suspect as the watered down certifications lose clout the best future will be much like before licensing especially if there is another RE implosion.

 

[alebrewer]

I get legal work that desires it. I get work from direct clients that have designated dept heads.

Fair enough - on the first point. I, too, have seen attorneys require a designation. On the second point - how does having a designated department head impact whether or not a designation is required to be on the panel? In fact, I'd argue that's really the only time a designation MIGHT be beneficial (other than doing legal work) - is in the 'chief appraiser' world. For residential appraisal work, I've never heard of anyone requiring a designation...

Unless you're just trying to sell the Institute?

 

[timindp]

Today I woke up at 7 am in order to take some comp photos for a rural FHA order from earlier this week. I left my house at 8 am. This assignment was rural and 35 miles away from my house. The comps were directly 3-4 miles away in each direction, north, south, east and west. After stumbling around dirt roads for 2 hours, I finally got the comp photos that I needed. It took me another hour to get back to my office. At this point it was already 11:30. I went to lunch and had another inspection at 2pm. The owner showed up 15 minutes late and this was a complex assignment on a lake. It took me about an hour at the property to get all the info I needed including measuring the property. By the time I got back to the office it was already 4 pm and I pulled comps. After getting stuck in the weeds and looking around the MLS for something similar it was already 5:30 pm. Since its Friday before memorial day I said screw it, ill finish this on Tuesday. I spent all day today working without being able to bill anything new. Appraising is a minimum wage job.

Why would you put off typing? You don't type on weekends? The amount of $ you make is the amount of time you put into it, generally speaking. Do you not pull comps before going out to the property? If you are putting in 2 trips, then yea, your wasting time and mileage and gas. I work 7 days a week. Inspections only M-F. Typing and catching up on orders pushes to the weekend. I guess it also depends on your market area. I never drive more than 10 miles from my home, still I average 8-10 orders a week.

 

[Essexfenwick]

Fair enough - on the first point. I, too, have seen attorneys require a designation. On the second point - how does having a designated department head impact whether or not a designation is required to be on the panel? In fact, I'd argue that's really the only time a designation MIGHT be beneficial (other than doing legal work) - is in the 'chief appraiser' world. For residential appraisal work, I've never heard of anyone requiring a designation...

Unless you're just trying to sell the Institute?

Often designated people get the head appraiser job then assign outside work to designated appraisers . Like a fraternity