The montana state board seems to like for you to play their game and start at the bottom and step up from there. However, I do know of people that have skipped the license level and just gone straight to certified residential, so it is do-able. If you've got all of the education / experience requirements and know your stuff, I'm sure that you can just apply directly for Certified General. The real obstacle in most people applying for Cert. Gen. now is the change in experience hours that are required now. It used to be just 3000 experience hours (res,com,any type). Now the requirement is 3000 hours with at least 1500 of those hours coming from commercial appraisals.
When you make application with the board, you have a choice of showing up and the board meeting or not showing up. Showing up before the board is a little intimidating, because you sit at the end of a couple tables with about 10 people sitting around the table staring at you and asking you questions about appraisal process and your 6 submitted appraisals. I don't quite like the fact that if you show some respect and show up for the meeting, you get a small interrogation; whereas if you just stay home you obviously aren't subjected to any questions and are just judged on your qualifications and submitted appraisals. However, that being said, I've been at the last couple of board meetings and would offer this bit of advice:
1. If you haven't been to one of the board meetings, show up at the next board meeting (I believe it's Sept. 16th) and sit through the whole day. It helps get you familiar with the board members and the new applicant screening process.
2. Even though it's more nerve racking and intimidating, SHOW UP for your application review/interview. I've been at the last couple of meetings and have noticed a decided difference in the way the board handles the applications. On applicants that don't show up, the board members are free to discuss the application without mixing words. They are much harder on these applications and have seen them tear a couple apart with no mercy.
On the other side, I saw an applicant show up, the board members found several flaws in the reports submitted, asked the applicant a few questions that he couldn't answer. (One he was asked was what functional depreciation was, didn't know, and instead of just telling them he didn't know, he tried bluffing and continued to make something up which was completely incorrect.) Instead of nailing him to the wall, it was like the board members didn't want to appear "mean" to the person while he was sitting right there. A couple of them just sort of corralled him back around by saying, "so you're kind of saying this, (gave the correct answer), right?" and the applicant just said "umm, yeah." I noticed it on another couple of applicants also, where the board seems a little reluctant to say anything bad to an applicants face, which may have something to do with their being accused by many before as being intimidating, mean-spirited, and just out to get everyone.
Two meetings ago I saw them totally shred a person's application who didn't show up, saying it was the worst appraisal reports they'd ever seen (a couple of the members were quite animated and got so frustrated with the application that they had flushed faces), and recommending that all 6 of the appraisal reports be submitted to the Screening Panel for disciplinary actions against the supervisor. Of course the application was denied. This same person resubmitted an application at the very next meeting and showed up. The board members were a lot more reserved and polite, noted many things wrong with the reports, but approved the application for licensure. Later, after the applicant left, they recommended that the submitted reports be again turned over to the Screening Panel for disciplinary actions against the supervisor.
Of the applicants that have showed up at the last 2 meetings, they've only denied 1, and that was because he was applying for Cert. Gen. and had never completed an appraisal before. He had supposedly been reviewing appraisals for the past several years and was trying to get the board to approve those experience hours. (They were not appraisal reviews as defined in USPAP, but going over and reading through appraisals as part of his job......I think he worked for something to do with the state tax appeals board or something like that.)
Well, this post has got entirely too long, talk at/to you later.......
