You'll never curtail bashing, it just goes with a public forum. Appraisers are bashed here along with almost every other profession whether related to appraising or not. That's just life.
Personally, I despise the NAR more than I do their members. I likewise have less respect for the Appraisal organizations than the individual appraisers.. but do we need to rehash the reason Skippy got his name and Realtards got theirs?
When I first got into the biz about 1992, I recall being pillared by the experienced Realtors who criticized my work and I took it because I was new at the game. Nevertheless I took time to think about their motivation. Its the compensation. Otherwise why would they care? Anything that revolves around commission work is suspect in any profession. Architect fees, cost plus building contracts, whatever...
Once I had a Realtor whine about my appraisal ($84,000) when the previous appraiser had done it for $88,000...the banker relented and hired the old appraiser who came upon with $92,000. The Realtor assured me that he could get $92,000 out of it easy... 450 days later...it sold for $82,000. The seller who had used this property for a down payment on another property that I had appraised at sales price, proceeded to refi with another bank for even more..He was foreclosed on within 1 year. Had the sap accepted my appraisal A-he'd not bought the other property, not went under, and not lost his first property. I reminded the Realtor of that a few months later...he hung his head and muttered something about poor management. ha.
As for the idea that the best appraisers were brokers from the old days, well, some are pretty good and many appraisers in the 70's 80's had to have a brokers license to appraise. But that didn't stop the S & L Crisis either did it? So what good are we? We certainly are not the firewall that we should have been.
The best appraisers, imho, are those who show an interest in being professional. A banker or an assessor comes from a background that easily has experience that can equal that of any RE pro turned appraiser. Someone with a background history of buying and selling their own property (I personally have never went thru a Realtor to buy or sell any property), who can read legal descriptions, how understands construction, etc. also has specialized knowledge. But fact is, no profession will cross train you any more than appraising.
I see appraisers attempt to value walnut trees in a fence row - I have one where $20,000 without further explanation was applied to 200 ± walnut trees. I seriously doubt they understood that trees in a fence row likely have wire embedded in them and few walnut buyers will accept fence line trees. I see dozens of properties with significant mineral rights being arm-waved appraised or dismissed as having "no value"... how stupid.
In fact, I have concluded that what we are asked to do is basically impossible. I also think that no less than 3 people should appraise any given property and do so as a committee. As property rights become more and more restricted and as houses become ever more complex, i think valuing homes will become harder and harder and AVMs even less accurate...but they are the wave of the future.
