Can an Appraisal Committee of a Realtor Board be Successful?

[jtrotta]

Tom & Austin;

ahhhhh, The "Art of Appraising" - after all it isn't always found in the context of a book is it :wink: perhaps this is why I'm glad to see that we have moved on from a profession to a "practice".

Practice, practice, practice - it will almost always lead to improvement.

Professional Realtors; forget how to practice, so they may be limited to improvement.

Edumacation only works, if you keep practicing

8)

 

[Thomas N. Morgan]

To All,

Thanks for your replies. I was trying to decide whether to offer to serve as committee chairman. Stay tuned.

Regards,

Thomas N. Morgan
Ocala, FL

 

[Mike Garrett RAA]

Children, Children.....I am a REALTOR® and an Appraiser (hmmmm, no fancy symbol for that). Don't paint us all with one brush or we will do the same to you.

Those damn appraisers...always killing my deals, why, why...they don't know chicken soup from chicken poop! Sound familiar? We are coming from different prospectives. Their job is to get the listing, market the property, and go to the closing table. Our job is to "Protect the Public" and that includes the buyers, sellers, and lenders.

The more we work to close the gap between real estate agents and appraisers the better off we all will be. REALTOR® / appraiser committees can really do good things. My brother, a REALTOR® and appraiser is a past president of our Board of REALTORS®..and he did it while being an appraiser. To this day the MLS book contains his illustrations on how to measure houses. We have been instrumental in getting information placed on the MLS to aid appraisers. The current project involves having a common sold sheet for the secretary/receptionist so that they can give information to appraisers.

Don't give up on those real estate agents...if they don't do their jobs we will have a lot less business. Work together, educate, educate, educate. Did I mention our board is one of the largest in the country? More than 4,000 members ...many of them who are REALTOR®/Appraisers...including me.

 

[Steve Owen]

Tom Hildebrandt, thank you for making a well reasoned and informative post. I have often thought I was alone in the wilderness when reading posts on this forum because most of the realtors I come in contact with are good, ethical operators.

As you said, they have a different mandate than appraisers. That leads to whether an appraiser committee can accomplish anything. I'm not certain an appraisal committee can accomplish anything towards changing the way realtors operate. You can't change a leopard's spots. But, on the other hand, getting involved never hurts.

I managed to get our MLS to change the way realtors report basement space. I did it without being on any board committee, but simply explaining my point of view to the executive and letting her take it to the MLS committee. Now, we don't have to call the listing agent every time to find out how much basement space there was and what part of it was finished. Did all of the realtors learn to do it right? Of course not, but most of them did.

I'm with Tom, also, in his heretical remarks; it isn't always that important. But, in those cases when it is, if you have been an appraiser long enough, you should have an intuition about when the GLA isn't right. Suggestion: call the selling agent and ask them who did the appraisal. Then, call the appraiser and get accurate data. Maybe one of the things you could accomplish with a committee is getting an extra field that lists the appraiser; that would be a hard one, because the data is entered by the listing agent not the selling agent, but it’s not impossible and would be oh, so useful.

I think great things can result from appraisers and brokers working together.

Right on!

 

[Pamela Crowley (Florida)]

Thank you to those that responded with calm reason and the gentle pushes for us to keep trying to teach and help each other - including teaching Realtors.

I get so disgusted sometimes that it becomes too easy to paint a negative picture using gross generalizations. I have been active in my local Board of Realtors for the past 5 years and last year was the SW Council Co Vice-President. I am still involved in a couple of committees and teach an appraisal section for the new agents at one of the larger local offices. I am on the nominating committee for my local board and managed to get an appraiser on the MLS Board of Directors. This will be the second Appraiser that will get involved in the BOR in this area. I was the first (that I know of) and I will keep trying to implement changes for the better. I have been slacking off in this during this past year and sometimes I spout off too much.

I do know that there are some very good Realtors - Thank you for the reminder.

The main thing to try to keep in mind is that when we keep trying to teach and help each other - we all win.

 

[Blue1]

Mike,

I know you're right however, in my market is seems that more and more no one is representing the buyers. Just had an assignment for a purchase where the Realtor was "searching his conscience" because my appraisal showed his buyers were going to pay 20K more for a home than what the market would support. "Searching his conscience?" Hey, look at the appraisal! What's with this "conscience" stuff?

Well, he DID look at my appraisal and asked me why I didn't use comparables (higher priced) in another area. I said, because I had three on the same street that were the same size, built by the same builder, similar in amenities and sold in the past month. He said: "yeah, but they didn't SELL for the same price as the subject is listed at and I have a buyer willing to pay that price." You see where this is going don't you?

Granted this is only one example, but from the looks of what realtors are listing homes for in my area right now, this type of thinking is rampant.

 

[Travis McGee]

Here we took a different approach about ten years ago. We convinced the Realtors that it was too their advantage to have good data. So we instituted whereby we could input appraiser data along with remarks after the property was sold. A simple code was used which included the identification of the appraiser. Rather than keep it private we shared it with the Realtors too. We made sure that none of the data violated USPAP confidentiality rules.

It has worked rather well, but has declined in effectiveness to about 60%. Mainly because of new appraisers who dont submit their data