Poll: Will you trade fee for volume in a slow market?

[Terrel L. Shields]

cause the government effectively knocked me off my first business

I was in a recovery mode (as an owner of a wellsite service company) in 1990 when Saddam invaded Kuwait. Oil prices shot up, then collapsed. Since the Saudi's needed US protection, they made a deal with George Bush I to open the spigots and dump cheap oil onto the markets in exchange for our planes and rockets. The impact was the cheap oil prices of the 1990s. Also, why I had to switch careers.

Clinton reaped much of the benefit of those low prices and housing also benefited from cheap energy. So, during Geo. Bush II's tenure, we saw oil prices increase with gasoline from 99 cents in 1999 to $3.50 by 2005. It bumped $4 by 2008 before collapsing in August of that year, and was a big factor in the collapse of housing in the Great Recession prior to that. High gasoline prices are not good for the economy. Today, oil prices are cheap on an inflationary scale - about the same prices at 2004-5. But inflation makes $2.40 in 2004 equal to over $4 today. In other words, gasoline should cost $4 by comparison to the $2.80 i just paid. (California not so much the same only higher) I think one thing that has kept this recession muted has been cheap energy. If we were paying $5 a gallon, we'd be seeing Great Recession prices for housing.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

Pick whatever numbers you want for the splits. If you think $400 is sanitized and contrived then lets go with $300. Or $250.

Simple calculus is the alternative cost of capital. I.e.- If I can NET $250 a day appraising, what can I NET working at the Sneeze and Freeze for $18 an hour. Or, can I net as a master carpenter ($320?? per day?) I know a leather craftsman that makes up to $400 a day. A knife maker that turns $500-1,000 a day. A helicopter EMT making $5,000 a month. A helicopter pilot can make $90,000 a year. A crop duster quite a bit less. Truckers for Walmart can make $90k annually easy. I know an appraiser who burned out and he and his wife team drove for 2 years. Made a substantial chunk of change hauling coast to coast with a truck equipped with an Allison auto shifting transmission.

So, when I am only getting 3 $350 appraisals a week, the pay for many jobs looks good

 

[Elliott]

If the demand for corn was cut by 80%, even farmers selling ethanol would have to cut their commodity price. Supply & Demand.

 

[DTB]

If the demand for corn was cut by 80%, even farmers selling ethanol would have to cut their commodity price. Supply & Demand.

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If they consider themselves to be ONLY corn farmers then yes.

It's a matter of your self perception. I consider myself to be a money making machine. Starting as an ASE certified auto mechanic, then became a master optician, started and sold a house insulating biz, became an appraiser and finally a profitable trader. All the while investing in rentals so that I would be making decisions of my path from a position of financial strength. Learned much of it from Pa but much was also self taught.

NOBODY"S GOT YOUR BACK BUT YOU

Each step was to an easier and more lucrative endeavor.

 

[George Hatch]

Simple calculus is the alternative cost of capital. I.e.- If I can NET $250 a day appraising, what can I NET working at the Sneeze and Freeze for $18 an hour. Or, can I net as a master carpenter ($320?? per day?) I know a leather craftsman that makes up to $400 a day. A knife maker that turns $500-1,000 a day. A helicopter EMT making $5,000 a month. A helicopter pilot can make $90,000 a year. A crop duster quite a bit less. Truckers for Walmart can make $90k annually easy. I know an appraiser who burned out and he and his wife team drove for 2 years. Made a substantial chunk of change hauling coast to coast with a truck equipped with an Allison auto shifting transmission.

So, when I am only getting 3 $350 appraisals a week, the pay for many jobs looks good

The other employment alternatives may represent the only true natural limitation on how low appraisal fees can go. We have pondered the question several times in the past of whether veteran appraisers would take an $800/week job or stick with a fee appraisal gig that on average netted them less.

 

[Mark K]

We understood the question very well.

Maybe you should act like you understood it and stop whining about a dozen other things.

Hell yes, you'd take a $25 cut for more work - would you take a $200 cut?

If I had to. Choices are: sit around and constantly whine about your situation and not feed the family....or....work your azz off at the lower rate for now until you can move on to something better.

 

[Elliott]

If appraisers are considered competent, then its hard for me to see that a single appraiser can suspend the law of supply and demand, especially when there is a substantial shift in the demand curve.

 

[Mark K]

If the demand for corn was cut by 80%, even farmers selling ethanol would have to cut their commodity price. Supply & Demand.

No way. The gov't would step in, buy all the excess corn at above market prices, and then dump the corn in the ocean if they had to. Or they'd mandate that every school lunch is served some corn based food-like substance.

Farmers are vastly over-producing right now partly because of the gov't mandates that over a BILLION bushels a year get turned into fuel, one of the dumbest ideas in the world, burning food. Nothing more than another Ag welfare program but effective at buying Ag votes and getting Ag corporate political donations.

 

[Elliott]

No way. The gov't would step in, buy all the excess corn at above market prices, and then dump the corn in the ocean if they had to. Or they'd mandate that every school lunch is served some corn based food-like substance.

Farmers are vastly over-producing right now partly because of the gov't mandates that over a BILLION bushels a year get turned into fuel, one of the dumbest ideas in the world, burning food. Nothing more than another Ag welfare program but effective at buying Ag votes and getting Ag corporate political donations.

And the government is on a mission to reduce demand for standard appraisals and increasing supply of appraisers by labeling appraisers as being 'racially bias,' offering alternative hybrid appraisal products, increasing supply of appraisers with grant funded PAREA, and offering alternative valuations or no valuations required for GSE supported loans. The 'government's' version of dumping corn in the ocean because they say they are 'helping' the consumer.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

then dump the corn in the ocean if they had to.

hey, pellet stoves can run corn