Tom Morgan et al
This thread is speaking to two very different issues. The question Tom Morgan posed is "Can an appraisal committe within a local Realtors group be effective?" The answer almost every poster has provided is a response to the question "are all Realtors competent or crooks or incompetent?"
I want to deal witht the second set of responses by saying that bashing Realtors as a group is like bashing the AI, or ASA or any trade organization as a group. There are good and bad Realtors just as there are good and bad members of the AI, ASA, etc. There are good or bad members of the total appraisal community.
I think a lot of the bashing of Realtors at large is not merited. First not all brokers are Realtors. Second you must note that brokers are acting as advocates for their client (buyer or seller). Their job is to get the client a good deal. Realtors do have a code of ethics, they must act reasonably and with a sense of fair play to all parties in a transaction, that does not mean that they can not try to sway others to a position advantageous to their client. There is nothing wrong with this for a person acting as a broker, as an advocate for their client.
Appraisers have an different mandate, we are not supposed to be advocates for anything but our opinions, we are not trying to sway someone in a direction that favors a particular posiition, but we are expected to be competent and to act impartially, objectively and independently. It would be wrong for us to be swayed by misleading data, such as the car sale example presented by Austin, but it is not improper for the broker to try to convince us otherwise. Should we explain to the advocate why we disagree with their position, sure, should they accept our explanation, sure, do they have to accept it, no they don't. Appraisers have no holy grail to value, brokers are entitled to their opinions, they are just framed in a different context.
Yeh, yeh, I know, they should not do them for any purpose other than listings, buying and selling, but that is not the point of this discussion. The fact remains that providing value opinions is part of their profession, and we appraisers need to come to grips with it and recognize the differences are usually in perspective which leads to different analysis and techniques. In almost all cases, the definition of value is different (most appraisal assignments are after the most probable price, most brokerage assignments are after the maximum/minimum price).
Appraisers, who are brokers (and who may or may not be Realtors), must be very careful in addressing which hat they are wearing to avoid misleading or confusing the client and the public.
The issue of whether appraisers and brokers can sit together and hammer out some guidelines to help smooth out some of the issues, like GLA and above grade/below grade S/F, was the basic question that Tom asked. My
answer is that we had very positive results from this in North Carolina. The NCAR Appraisal Section sponsored meetings with brokers and appraisers to prepare guidelines for measuring residential properties so that issues such as those previousy mentioned could be resolved. After several months of effort, we produced a set of guidelines that were acceptable to the NC Real Estate Commission, and while not adopted by the NC Appraisal Board, they were acknowledged.
I think great things can result from appraisers and brokers working together. The commercial appraisers and brokers in my home town meet regularly in a strucutre organization to share data and talk about industry trends (as well as where to go fishing and hunting). Brokers CE and appraisers CE often overlap, and that is good.
Joint meetings of aprpaisers and brokers to discuss substantive topics need inspired leadership to keep misunderstanding from becoming confrontational. It took a lot of effort by both sides to hammer out the S/F guidelines, a lot of discussion, because each side and each person had different perspectives. There were times when it would have been easy to resort to charges of incompetentcy, ingorance, and worse, but they were avoided by good leadership. Start with small issues, work up to the big issues in stages.
Leadership requires effort and expenditures of time well beyond the actual meetings. Be prepared to do it yourself in voluntary organizations. It is easy to sit outside and pick, but constructive criticism requires effort.
Tom, if you want to discuss what we did in NC, post me back.
Best regards
Tom Hildebrandt GAA
