You are asking the right questions.
Who will replace the experienced appraisers when they retire, etc.?
If no one is willing to train a newbie, what will happen to the profession in the future?
My problem with trainees is that the rules, which are an effort to keep skippy from training more of his ilk, is having the exact opposite effect. Only a skippy has little enough sense to turn a trainee loose from near day one to 'sink or swim.'
The more skill and experience you - the mentor - have, the more valuable that is. Therefore, if your trainee "screws up", you have much more to lose. The trainee, OTOH, has very little to lose. No client base, no long term commitments, no business built up over the years.
How do you keep a trainee from screwing up? Literally to appraise the property for the second time. Anyone can make a mistake. Our board is not the only one who holds the supervisor to a higher standard than the "trainee". So even when that trainee has one or more years experience, they are still apt to make mistakes. If they do, they suffer the consequences to a lesser degree.
We have a lot of folks saying they can appraise a house and report it on a 1004 form in 4 - 6 hours. I can easily take that many hours or longer to desk review a report. And if I don't have the full file to look at, or have the memory of an elephant, how do review a report? I have to make sure the address is correct, every detail on the inspection sheet and tax card match the card. Do I simply look at the comps?...or do a full comp search myself? Do I look at the land sales? or do a full land sales grid myself...I take a risk if my appraiser says the lot is worth $28,000 and i find later no lot has sold in that subdivision for over $24,000. Simple things that can only be verified by duplicating the research down to the inth degree.
How can it be worth it? You are literally wasting all your time reviewing when you could go out and do it.
Futher, the new 1004 makes a liar out of you. If you research comps and the grids asks for the effective date of the data sources and 2 months later you use the same comp....do you go back thru the DB and/or old report to find out exactly what date you researched it? or LIE and say the date you did the research was today?...
Trainees are landmines and until the boards and ASB decides there is a sandbox that they can "play" in (e.g.-SFR houses under $250,000), when is the supervisor going to be able to safely trust their work? I make mistakes. How many more will a trainee make..even one who has 6 mo. experience or more....and I am liable for each and every one of them.
The short answer is that I am not sticking my neck out for a trainee as some effort "for the good of the profession." I owe TAF, ASB, or my state board nothing, certainly not respect. They are not here to serve and protect me,
they are here to punish me. Only sheer luck makes my interpretation of USPAP and theirs anywhere near congruent.
If the ASB and states will consider less than 100% liability for a trainer, Provide a much simplified USPAP which is NOT a moving target, and require the state investigators to operate on a reasoned level with national standards for training the INVESTIGATOR....then I might consider a trainee. Otherwise, I do not feel obliged to train anyone and if there are no other appraisers around when I am gone...tough. Not my problem. Let the same government who screwed it up fix it.
I guess I'm one of the lucky ones who's being trained by someone who demands
Yes, you are.
