The current industry model is sustained on the mentoring program and it would be difficult to debunk the prevailing method.
The current industry model is completely dysfunctional.
You dont learn anything about appraising in appraiser school so you're basically useless until your supervisor spends a couple weeks training you to inspect a house, select comps, use the data sources, complete the basics of the report.
Once you're trained you're still not that much use to an ETHICAL appraiser who's going to inspect and view comps and do a meaningful review of the report you right. At best the supervisor can hope to realize a 50% reduction in the amount of time they have invested in a given job, by having a trainee help them measure, inspect, and write a draft of the report. If they're seeing more than 50% time savings they're probably cheating on the inspections or reviews or both.
After you're licensed you're immediate competition in the supervisor's market.
Bottom line the up-front costs and long term competition associated with a trainee are not adequately compensated by the financial benefit you get while training them......unless you cheat.
I think the solution lies in 3 parts.
1) You need to REALLY train ATs. They should have actually completed a few mock appraisals, on real houses, inspections, data, GSE compliant write up...the whole bit. Part of the training should include a better understanding of ethics in the industry. USPAP is all good and well, but when you take the 16 hour class you dont have enough information about the industry to translate it to the day to day activities of an appraiser.
2) The trainee/supervisor relationship needs to be formalized. The pair need to be registered with the state up front. Detialed logs of jobs, activiteis, training time, etc should be kept. Like with a student pilot, there should be a series of progressive sign-offs for certian activities, with some sort of 3rd party verification of competence. That way, for instance when a super thinks a trainee is ok to inspect on their own, the could get them signed off for "solo" inspections as part of a supervised report. This kind of progressive, ability to work independantly would increase the trainee's value to the super and the trainee's value in the market place which would also aid the trainee's economic situation.
3) Appraisers who want to incorporate trainee's into their business need to meet a higher standard. The need specific training, and additional scrutiny of their activities.
But the whole plan has to be built around making a trainee a more economically viable entity.
