Desktop Appraisals Becoming the New Normal

[bnmappraisal]

Probably just easier to have the appraiser do a site visit if floor plan not available with the listing.

Yes and No
Right now, with so many of us being busy...
Also, many times I (and probably any experienced appraiser) can "know" the floor plan of most homes without having seen them
we've already seen them countless times

 

[Joe Flacco]

Yes and No
Right now, with so many of us being busy...
Also, many times I (and probably any experienced appraiser) can "know" the floor plan of most homes without having seen them
we've already seen them countless times

Yeah but for the GSE desktops the floor plan is required in the report. It is not you are familiar with the floor plan or not.

 

[bnmappraisal]

Good Point

 

[ucbruin]

Did you say that you are getting $350 per desktop?

Probably during the past 6 months or so, no Desktops offered....
Desktop fees, Bristol County $470 and Norfolk County $530....

 

[Joe Flacco]

Probably during the past 6 months or so, no Desktops offered....
Desktop fees, Bristol County $470 and Norfolk County $530....

Oh. So you were doing the Covid desktops. That is a little bit different situation.

 

[djd09]

call mueller they can do the inspection for you. suckers

 

[djd09]

you cannot scope away liability. and you dont have qualified immunity. dont drink the kool aid

 

[bluechip]

Mark Skapenitz wrote a very strong blog post about this. Bottom line DESKTOPS will violate PUBLIC TRUST plain and simple.
TRUST

 

[J Grant]

Is it possible that you may be looking at it backwards? IOW, that appraisal quality isn't being degraded - if anything, I'd submit that appraisals - as a whole - are more credible now than 10 years ago. Is it possible that technology is just improving at a rate MUCH faster than appraisal quality is improving?

There is a finite level of "quality " an appraisal is ever to achieve. It is what it is. The quality of the people doing appraisers, can vary tremendously, and much of that I blame on lowering the bar for entry as well as not having mandated reviews of work to ferret out the truly bad appraisers, as well as the greed system which sees clients tolerate sub standard work. I don't think an appraisal has to be perfect, or biblical length , but it should show reasoning, logic, good comp selection, narrative. Clients will not $3000 for an SRA demo level report . On the other hand the super tight turn times can affect adversely the work even for an experienced appraiser, the norm of 48 hours after inspection in much of residential end is impairing quality.

In the same vein, technology also hits a wall in the level of "quality" it can achieve, though quality is the wrong word it should be credibility and reliability, It has different limitations. If technology was the solution, human problems would have been solved by now, but since technology creates its own set of problems and potential for abuse, that is far from the case.

 

[Non Sequitur]

Mark Skapenitz wrote a very strong blog post about this. Bottom line DESKTOPS will violate PUBLIC TRUST plain and simple.
TRUST

He’s off the mark (no pun intended), again.

His basic problem is data collectors aren’t licensed and should be held responsible (basically because they aren't licensed) for any flawed data collected. As far as creating yet another license in our field, ask yourself “How did licensing AMCs protect public trust or appraisers?” Yeah, it worked so well we’re on the verge of being replaced by the licensed firewall that morphed into our direct competition.

Good luck going down the “If only they were licensed” road.