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How Much Does A Appraiser Trainee Should Be Getting Paid?

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Back in the dark ages when a lot of us were trained, the trainee fees were low, but the overall fee was fair.

The original poster stated $175 to $250. My personal opinion is, that is a reasonable fee to pay a trainee, in today's market.

Most of us cannot afford to pay that kind of fee, because of the involvement of AMCs, the fee paid to the appraiser is low, and that contributes to less trainees.

If we could afford to pay 175 to 250 to a trainee, and still have a large enough piece of the pie left over to cover our time, there would be more trainees in the pipeline.

It is a shame that the AMCs are cannibalizing our profession for their profit.
 
I got 40% of the fee and did over 95% of the report including all of the trips to the photoshop for the 35mm photos. I starved to death with a family of 4 but had a good mix of property, res & com, types and condemnation appraisals.
My income more than quadrupled when I started my own office in the neighboring county, my home county. GP, court & estate work is a breeze compared to AMC work.
 
sandpiperapp said:
Back in the dark ages when a lot of us were trained, the trainee fees were low, but the overall fee was fair.

The original poster stated $175 to $250. My personal opinion is, that is a reasonable fee to pay a trainee, in today's market.

Most of us cannot afford to pay that kind of fee, because of the involvement of AMCs, the fee paid to the appraiser is low, and that contributes to less trainees.

If we could afford to pay 175 to 250 to a trainee, and still have a large enough piece of the pie left over to cover our time, there would be more trainees in the pipeline.

It is a shame that the AMCs are cannibalizing our profession for their profit.
Click to expand...

The AMCs are eating up trainee fees
 
When I was training, my mentor had a rate of 40% for a Trainee. For residential appraisals, that typically meant I got $160-240. He moved the rates up to 50% for Licensed and 60% for Certified for assignments sourced through his office, if you got your own assignments (and you didn't ask him to cosign), the fee was all yours. So based on what I got, I paid my trainee 30% for assistance as a pre-Trainee and then moved her up to 40% once she got her Trainee license.
 
I've been a trainee for 14 months. I spent 9 months with a firm that does only residential work...mainly for the AMCs. My fee split started at 25% and was bumped to 30% after I had around 50 appraisals under my belt. I was completing between 10-15 appraisals a week and clocking in 60-80 hours. My pay worked out to around slightly better than minimum wage after accounting for all of the hours I was putting in. In those 9 months, there were only 7 whole days that I did not work and 4 days that I worked all day, all night and all day the next day without going home. It was a pace I had to keep up in order to pay my bills and keep up my family, but working 7 days a week for 16 hours or more a day was not a pace I could keep up for a substantial length of time. Despite the hours and pay, I had planned on trying to make it work until I had enough hours to obtain my residential certification. But then my supervisor presented me with a contract that would have raised my fee split to 35% to go to 40% after certification and then increase 2.5% per year until capped at 50% and it included a non-compete clause that prohibited me from working in the appraisal industry at all for a period of 2 years after severance and required me to reimburse the company for a $10,000 penalty if severed within 5 years...and all of those provisions were in effect regardless of who severed the business relationship...if I left, I was to abide by the noncompete and pay the penalty...if their work slowed down and they had to let me go, I had to abide by the noncompete and pay the penalty. I started looking for other employment the same day I was presented with the contract. I found a commercial firm to take me on, my fee split is close to where I would have capped out with the previous company and I rarely work more than an 8 hour day, some weeks much less. I wouldn't go back to doing residential AMC work unless I absolutely had to.
 
ChasingRabbits must be in a city. In my rural area if you get 4 residential completed in a week you are lucky and 3 for an AMC. That is why I prefer estate, other and general purpose work with a wide gamut of types up to my license limit and some with co-appraisers. When I was a trainee the most I finished was 4 in a day or cookie cutters in the same subdivision of a 60,000 pop city. Three neighboring Counties in my area total less than 60,000 population.
 
ChasingRabbits. I don't believe any court in America would have held in favor of a non compete contract that restrictive. But glad you were able to get past that.
 
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