History Of Real Estate Appraisals In The Us

[Austin]

I am loaded with work today and can’t spent to much time debating but I couldn’t resist stating that the first mention of a real estate transaction and private property rights is from the Bible book of Genesis when Abraham purchased a lot from the Chaldeans to bury his wife Sarah. Also, the Judeo-Christian tradition of tithing 10% came about when Abraham visited a priestly King named Malchiseck (SP) at Salem and paid him a tithe of 10% of the booty he had taken from the captors of his nephew Lot. In a related account when Abraham met the King of Sodom at the same time he established another valuable Judeo-Christian principle: Never allow yourself to be endebted to a corrupt and criminal King. Pay them what you owe them and move on.
In a related story, our system of land titles traces back to the division of the Promised Land to the 12 tribes of Isreal. This is the underpinning the free enterprise system and our system of land titles.

 

[Sunny Taylor]

This appears to be quite an active forum. I am overwhelmed by the volume of responses! I appreciate each of the suggestions - please keep 'em coming. I will post here what I able find during research and any of the obstacles I run into - thank you!

Sunny

 

[EDWARD BERRY]

THANKS AUSTIN,

A good exercise would be to plot the land of the 12 tribes. Really interesting.

ed.

 

[BigBlueGA]

Originally posted by EDWARD BERRY@Nov 20 2003, 12:08 PM
A good exercise would be to plot the land of the 12 tribes. Really interesting.

Two words....

TITLE SEARCH!

 

[Paul Ness MAI]

Here's an interesting article "History of Appraising From the Middle Ages Till Now".

http://www.appraisaltoday.com/appraisi.htm

PS - How about plotting the land God promised to Israel. I think it runs from about the Nile to the Euphrates.

 

[Austin]

After reading that article Paul posted and giving due consideration to all that was stated above, guys and gals, we may hold claim to the third oldest profession in world history right behind *****s and lawyers. Who would have thunk it? The three groups have a lot in common the more you think about it.
One other thing that I noticed from that article was that the Church or the King historically owned most of the land. Did you know that the largest non-governmental private property owner in this country is the Catholic Church? And they don't pay a dime of taxes on any of it. That is a little quirk of the church being separated from the state. We church people ain't paying nothing if we are separated.

 

[Don Clark]

B) Many years ago I read in the then current magazine of what is now the appraisal institute, an article that stated that in the 1600's there was a law in Massassachusets that applied to the "Aprizers(see also Apprisers) of real estate. I quoted that in an atricle I wrote circa about 4 years ago in the annual publication of the Real Estate Educators Association. Send me a PM with your e-mail address and I will Fax it to you.

Don

 

[Thomas N. Morgan]

Sunny,

You have received many interesting, informative and humorous replies to your questions.

You have not gotten a definitive answer for "when were they first required and how inititated and enforced?"

With respect to US laws, someone already mentioned US Govt. programs of the 1930's. Specifically, it was F. H. A.

Before that, various States had laws governing the percentage of value that institutional investors, such as insurance companies, could lend on real property.

I don't think there has ever been a law that required an appraisal, per se, unrelated to anything else. The laws were about lending. The requirement for an appraisal merely flowed from that.

As far as I know, USPAP was the first set of governmentally-enforced regulations affecting the appraisal itself.

Tom

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

As far as I know, USPAP was the first set of governmentally-enforced regulations affecting the appraisal itself.

and to this day there are no small number of judges who will weight the opinion of three "knowledgable parties" in agreement on the value of a parcel over the opinion of a certified appraiser. So it begs the question. Does USPAP do a better job of making appraisers more reliable, honest, and accurate than a party of three people who agree upon a price? Short answer. No.

P. S. - this 'appraiser' system is still in place in many states, such as Oklahoma [re: the recent Chad Stites controversy in Tulsa]

 

[David Riggs]

Ter,

What happened to Chad Sites? There was a lot of reporting on him, then it all died.

Did he lose his appraisal License?


It sounded to me that he should.


On a side note I had a job come my way last summer that he dropped a job at the last minute, leaving the bank in a time crunch.