George Hatch
Elite Member
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2002
- Professional Status
- Certified General Appraiser
- State
- California
Obviously there's no way to prevent the appeal if the borrower is going to just shotgun it out regardless of the report content. But there's still better vs worse. Not to mention the obvious:
I almost always ask at the outset if they have their own sales that they want me to consider. One reason is that I always want to take every assignment seriously. But I also have more nefarious reasons such as wanting them to take their best shot up front so I can dismantle them in my report (if/when they're trying to pawn off non-comps). I encourage them to write a list of the property attributes and whatever else they want to say so I can include it in my workfile (they virtually never send it, but I don't really care whether they do or don't). There's nothing altruistic or servient about these actions. I'm doing it because it's in my own best interests to do it. I do want to know what there is to know but I also do it in order to have the means to say I did it - in the event someone wants to lie and say I just blew them off. I don't ignore people or blow them off.
I do other things in my reports to prevent the reader from thinking that swapping a sale is going to change my opinion of value. I write a specific neighborhood analysis that directly addresses the composition so as to provide context for how this property fits into its neighborhood, I do a 5yr summary of all sales - regardless of comparability - which track low-median-high GLAs and prices; again in order to relate my subject and its value to its environment. And I directly refer to other sales that I came across in my research which also support the trends demonstrated by the comps. AND I acknowledge outliers and sometimes even include one in order to draw the contrast between the many vs the few. If I thumbed through 40 listings before I got to the direct comps I used in the report then I say it that way in my report, and I also refer to my usage of those other sales as providing context for the sales I did use.
Brick by brick. Some of this commentary is boilerplated to be edited in every report as appropriate, so the editing part goes really fast. I can do the 5yr neighborhood price/size/DOMs summary in about 5 minutes but apart from that none of these efforts take any more time to add.
Sure, none of these anti-critic efforts are a silver bullet WRT preventing the knee-jerk ROV. In my view, anything I can do to raise the barrier to entry for criticizing the credibility of the work is to my advantage and to their disadvantage. Especially if the situation devolves into some appraisal-vs-appraisal comparison. I don't lie, so when someone else comes along and tries to get creative with their facts and comp selection their report is already starting off at the significant disadvantage.
The first rule of appraisal fights is to be right to begin with.
I almost always ask at the outset if they have their own sales that they want me to consider. One reason is that I always want to take every assignment seriously. But I also have more nefarious reasons such as wanting them to take their best shot up front so I can dismantle them in my report (if/when they're trying to pawn off non-comps). I encourage them to write a list of the property attributes and whatever else they want to say so I can include it in my workfile (they virtually never send it, but I don't really care whether they do or don't). There's nothing altruistic or servient about these actions. I'm doing it because it's in my own best interests to do it. I do want to know what there is to know but I also do it in order to have the means to say I did it - in the event someone wants to lie and say I just blew them off. I don't ignore people or blow them off.
I do other things in my reports to prevent the reader from thinking that swapping a sale is going to change my opinion of value. I write a specific neighborhood analysis that directly addresses the composition so as to provide context for how this property fits into its neighborhood, I do a 5yr summary of all sales - regardless of comparability - which track low-median-high GLAs and prices; again in order to relate my subject and its value to its environment. And I directly refer to other sales that I came across in my research which also support the trends demonstrated by the comps. AND I acknowledge outliers and sometimes even include one in order to draw the contrast between the many vs the few. If I thumbed through 40 listings before I got to the direct comps I used in the report then I say it that way in my report, and I also refer to my usage of those other sales as providing context for the sales I did use.
Brick by brick. Some of this commentary is boilerplated to be edited in every report as appropriate, so the editing part goes really fast. I can do the 5yr neighborhood price/size/DOMs summary in about 5 minutes but apart from that none of these efforts take any more time to add.
Sure, none of these anti-critic efforts are a silver bullet WRT preventing the knee-jerk ROV. In my view, anything I can do to raise the barrier to entry for criticizing the credibility of the work is to my advantage and to their disadvantage. Especially if the situation devolves into some appraisal-vs-appraisal comparison. I don't lie, so when someone else comes along and tries to get creative with their facts and comp selection their report is already starting off at the significant disadvantage.
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