Falling Out - More Appraisers Quit

[AnonApprsr]

Good, the less appraisers the better for the rest of us.

 

[smackodu]

Good, the less appraisers the better for the rest of us.

Amen! Amen! Amen! I would love for Joan to have a hugh file of backround checks filled with appraisers names who have falllen out...And her name could be at the top of that file.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

the appraisal profession could benefit from additional license levels,

exactly...

There ought be benchmark classwork to do say rural property, manufactured home, resource (timber, water, mineral) and commercial ag - Just because I can drive does not mean I should be allowed to herd an 18 wheeler down the road...or even a motorcycle. My state requires a motorcycle endorsement.

If you have waited until your financial situation is hopeless then it is a true burden to try and upgrade a license. But when I went for my license, I had gone thru a 3 year legal separation/contested divorce, had sold out my geological business for $2700...something I had invested over $60,000 in. Cattle prices were at historic lows. I was driving a 76' Ford Pickup...later upgraded to an 86 Jeep...which caught fire in 96 and burned up...it's never "easy". It is not "easy" to upgrade your license. But even if you only take 15 hours a year of QE, you'll get there.. And I spent months perfecting the base templates in Word Perfect that I use today...

Yeah, the Feds might dumb down the rules... but I doubt it. I doubt they will change APPRAISERS regs...but they will do what my late brother said was the logical thing. Brokers will do the below de minimus stuff cheap and appraisers will do the high dollar stuff. I can live with that.

There is a critical shortage of SPECIAL SKILLS appraisers. Ever see an appraisal of a Truck stop? Mall? Megawarehouse? Airport? Marine surveyor? Timber specialist? All these specialties pay far above that "journeyman" rate. You charge by the hour or day. You get paid mileage... holy cow...that's how professionals get paid. I know an outfit that appraises poultry farms in 7 states. How many URARs do you think they do?

 

[DTB]

What were fees before the bubble? During the bubble and now?

So did I miss where everyone's fees went up 100% during the boom due to the vast amount of business that was available? Seems like income went up due to working significantly more.

Because the past is supposed to portend the future, or so I've heard.

Fees have never been as low as they are now (inflation adjusted), once fees or costs of an item reach such a low level it is very difficult, nay impossible, to return them to where they should be.

 

[J Grant]

Glad to see you agree with me Terrel...

I do think more defined license levels would help the profession. Just as physicians need to earn board certification in certain spcialties (heart surgery etc). Not that we are at their level, but they are on the right track as far as who is allowed to do what...a general physician MD license allows them to do only certain proceedures and not others.

I agree, a higher level of commercial license for complex properties, maybe requiring a certain number of years of commercial, a demonstration report, etc.

As far as transitioning from res to commercial, imo, many res appraisers have the basic skills to do more but need more education and course work in the techniques, income cap etc. Many of us learned this years ago so it is familiar, but we need refresher courses as well as more indepth courses .

Imo, there could be a step license leading to a full commercial GC. A res apprasier would have to have a certain # of years appraising to qualify, then take additional coursework in commercial and small income properties, and pass a state exam test. This step license could allow them to do small apartment complexes, say, below 40 units, with a limited amount of retail space in the apt complex, . Small acreage farms, say below 50 acres. Small motel/hotel below 40 units . Small stand alone stores or simple income properties such as laundromats.

An appraiser having this step license could then get a certain number of credit hours toward a full GC license from appraising these kinds of properties. To achieve a full CG license, they then need to apprentice to a GC for the remaining hours, take more coursework and the GC state test.

Res appraisers with experience and a step license would make them more desireable as trainees for a CG, the CG does not have to teach them from scratch and can at least have them work on certain commercial properties while they earn the full CG license. It would make it more economically feasable for res appraisers to transition as well.

I also think reviewing should be a speciality license with tests, coursework, demonstration reviews etc to qualify, as well as certain # of years appraising.

I think reviewing reports other than state an appraiser is located in should not be allowed (that is for the lender side, they want these cheap national level reviews which imo are worthless)

 

[The Warrior Monk]

So did I miss where everyone's fees went up 100% during the boom due to the vast amount of business that was available? Seems like income went up due to working significantly more.

As Terrel noted:

There is a critical shortage of SPECIAL SKILLS appraisers.

For those people doing that type of work, their fees are much higher than they used to be.

Fees have never been as low as they are now (inflation adjusted), once fees or costs of an item reach such a low level it is very difficult, nay impossible, to return them to where they should be.

It's simply supply and demand. The supply of appraisers for, say, easy lending work far outstrips demand. The result? Low fees. For some of the complex work, demand far outstrips supply. The result? High fees.

 

[George Hatch]

Terrel,

I must confess to not getting it. On the one hand you despise the licensing system and most everything that goes along with it, including the CE system. Now you want to make both the licensing system and the CE industry bigger by expanding the levels of licensure and breaking out separate training criteria for appraising different property types?

I pity the poor property owner that wants to get an appraisal on a mixed use property with 2 or 3 different uses onsite and one of them is really funky.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

Geo.

you despise the licensing system and most everything that goes along with it, including the CE system.

My beef is with an inscrutible USPAP document which can be interpreted 80,000 ways and is....or whatever the number of appraisers are. I have a problem with on line CE which is a joke. I have a problem with people who take the lowest common denominator CE without regards to whether it actually teaches them anything or not...it's a compliance document that they need to renew the license. I have a problem when I took hardcore technical appraisal courses taught by industry experts (which i did at an expense 10 years ago of over $1000 for the course alone) and then had it rejected for CE credit despite sending the summary of the class and the instructors were both professional engineers and certified appraisers.

My criticism of boards is simply a reflection of the truth that such boards adjudicate peoples very lives...but lack the most rudimentary training as jurists. Meaning that if they make a bad decision (which is all too often) then the appraiser is stuck with the prospect of a pyrric victory by spending a year's salary in court costs to get the decision overturned. Check the OK forum for the appraiser who was reviewed by her ex-husband's new wife, was sanctioned over the resulting complaint,....and had to go to the appeals courts to get the decision reversed. Would trained jurists make that mistake? We've had 3 cases in Arkansas where the board was seriously reversed. In fact, the boards are barely winning 50% of the time...geez, why not just get a dart board?

But since we are obviously stuck with a licensing system that will not change radically - too many people are making money off it...why would I not still be for incremental changes that make sense?

CGs....so? We have some who think they can appraise anything regardless their total lack of competence. I have seen timberland appraised by CGs who did the appraisal on a LAND form. I have seen FSA advise appraisers to include /break out the mineral rights for $1 per acre.....so there is a value to the mineral in their loans but otherwise they didn't have a clue how much the mineral rights were really contributing to the land.

I think a lot of appraisers who are doing C stores and Motels, etc. should have a higher standard of training than those who do only tenant occupied retail space or apartments...

I have never advocated there not be standards of conduct. I think it appropriate that a system exist where the appraiser is mandated to have minimum number of years experience for certain property types or have the co-signature of a someone with that experience. What I don't believe is that the appraiser should kowtow to ambiguous rules by a system of parsing ephemera and catagorizations such as summarize-state-discuss, then loading the remainder of the report with pointless disclaimers and explanatory text that no one reads.

 

[Meandering]

What I don't believe is that the appraiser should kowtow to ambiguous rules by a system of parsing ephemera and categorizations such as summarize-state-discuss, then loading the remainder of the report with pointless disclaimers and explanatory text that no one reads.

Here Here!:new_all_coholic:

I vote for Terrel to rewrite the system. No one wants boiler plate until they are all asking for it, even when it makes not sense to state it, but heck, it's a client stipulation so it has to be needed.

 

[George Hatch]

I vote for Terrel to rewrite the system.

Yeah, me too.