In any case, the other observation I made also still holds: the alternative of going with the Appraisal Institute doesn't solve even one of the problems that the "speak truth to power" writer and his fanbois are complaining about. There are still internal politics at the AI, there are still controversies over the transparency, the money and there were some big controversies over the building, which make djd09 quips about 15th Street look really silly. There are still the occasional conflicts between a few of the local chapters vs the national. The AI itself is not a non-profit and they actually do sell education and texts and stuff which are required spending for their members, and like I said, their overall membership costs are a lot higher than licensing costs.
I don't make those observations to single the AI out as being worse that any of the other orgs because they're all subject to the same types of problems stemming from the same source: they are all run by people and people can only act like....people. Not angels. As it stands now none of the controversies at the AI are any of my business because I don't have to be involved with them. That's why I never or almost never get involved with those discussions when they pop up on this forum.
In imagining the alternate reality the parallels which would have resulted would have been unavoidable. None of the professional orgs would be able to solicit and consider input from the various user types in commerce or the govt without operating advisory committees - making them vulnerable to allegations of pay-to-play. The standards would still take written form (although probably not extended into the other property types) and they would still end up being written in anti-lawyer legalese in order to prevent the offenders from getting off on the verbiage, and the enforcement (for which the AI was notorious) would still be uneven across the different chapters and riddled with "status" oriented outcomes. One rule for the candidates and another for the designees. I saw how that worked back in the day when they ran the table prior to licensing. The AMC and AVM controversies would still have evolved in the same manner - because not even the AI could have adopted a "just say no" approach without the users going straight to their alternatives and cutting appraisals off altogether.
I don't think and I have never said that the current setup is the only way this profession could have gone. What I am saying is that it doesn't matter whether the committee that is investigating and resolving a complaint of misconduct is working for the state govt or a for-profit professional org. They're still going to be facing the same developments in the market for services. The banks are still going to be compelled to use appraisals against their will and they'll still take it out of the appraisers. The org's actions are still going to be subject to lawsuit and legal reversals at the courts. And because of that they're still going to have to promulgate standards that their critics never read for content and "don't understand". And every single other complaint you can think of that gets levied at TAF, the ASC, your state board, the lenders who are compelled by the govt to use appraisals against their will and the ability of your competing peers in the marketplace to get away with doing less than what you want to sell for the same fee.
No matter what, people are always going to act like people. Speaking of which, those politicians should give that principle some consideration - including how "people are people" affects what they do as politicians and how govt itself operates. Consider that first before they buy into the conspiracy theory that the appraisal profession as a whole is acting in bad faith WRT the rights of the borrowers in mortgage lending transactions.
