The hard part of non-lender work was never the appraising

[Home Vault]

Hi I've been an Appraiser since 2004. We built a system over the years to grow our firms non-lender work and recently made it public Ive scaled up 4 different appraisal firms over 20 years. This is my product, Im the co-founder. Everyone in this profession says diversify into non-lender work. Nobody mentions the annoying part.. quoting blind, chasing payment, explaining the report 3 times, marketing the right way. The appraising was never the hard part. We built an in-house system to handle all of it and grew our firm on it, so we decided to open it up to everyone. Its called HomeVault. (www.gethomevault.com ) worth a look if youre trying to a. expand your current relationships or b. build up estates, divorce, tax appeal, pre-listing work. this is not an order management system, there is a lot more to it.Theres also a spot where supervisors and trainees can find each other. You can refer appraisals, and we are marketing it nationwide. Not an AMC, no lender work, not recruiting anyone. You stay independent. Lot of work went into this and were getting appraisers on now and then opening up to public ...

Happy to answer anything

 

[Amy Perkins]

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[Non Sequitur]

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???

 

[Dublin ohio]

$$$?

 

[Home Vault]

It's free to join, but there are different plans you can see here. https://www.gethomevault.com/for-appraisers. They vary based on what you think volume would for. The fees per order, and referral fees vary anywhere from 5-20%. We also have other tech tools that we will be giving to users as well as monthly group sessions helping out growing business.

 

[Home Vault]

$$$?

added below.. also we have alot more tech too we will give access to users.

 

[Digger88]

I joined but the fees are huge (20% only if you get an order through the site) and the everything is AI was new for me... Cool concept but this has no DA how are you going to rank? With agentic search the norm why would someone happen upon this site versus the goog finding exactly what someone needs in the town they need an appraisal

 

[Tom4value]

Sad to say but I am about 2-5% non-lender work. 90% is referral work, 10% is old fashioned, sending out mailers to attorneys and accountants. As the OP said, the toughest part, at least for me, is pricing the order. I want it to be worth my while but I also know they don’t know what to expect.

For pricing, I have a full interview as to what they want. Unlike lender work, the “scope of the assignment” is a big deal. I then devise a letter of engagement, something the lender does for us.

After that is done, I am home free. I collect payment before submitting the report. Questions are minimal, usually confirming what they think. The reason is you really have to double and triple check your work. You don’t have an underwriter to correct mistakes before they become serious. For legal work, an attorney is not as nice as an underwriter.

Bottom line, I wish I expanded my non-lender work so I am not dependent on interest rates. As a self-employed appraiser looking towards retirement, I will probably expand that more opposed to shutting myself off completely.

 

[Home Vault]

Sad to say but I am about 2-5% non-lender work. 90% is referral work, 10% is old fashioned, sending out mailers to attorneys and accountants. As the OP said, the toughest part, at least for me, is pricing the order. I want it to be worth my while but I also know they don’t know what to expect.

For pricing, I have a full interview as to what they want. Unlike lender work, the “scope of the assignment” is a big deal. I then devise a letter of engagement, something the lender does for us.

After that is done, I am home free. I collect payment before submitting the report. Questions are minimal, usually confirming what they think. The reason is you really have to double and triple check your work. You don’t have an underwriter to correct mistakes before they become serious. For legal work, an attorney is not as nice as an underwriter.

Bottom line, I wish I expanded my non-lender work so I am not dependent on interest rates. As a self-employed appraiser looking towards retirement, I will probably expand that more opposed to shutting myself off completely.

 

[Home Vault]

This is one of the most honest breakdowns of non-lender work I've seen, and you nailed the two things nobody talks about: pricing the assignment and the fact that there's no underwriter safety net.
The scope interview you described is exactly right. That upfront conversation is the whole ballgame. Most appraisers who avoid non-lender work aren't avoiding the appraisal, they're avoiding the sales conversation. They've never had to quote a fee to a human being who doesn't know what an appraisal costs.

On your last point about wishing you'd expanded sooner, that's the part I'd push back on gently: it's not too late, and the mailers-to-attorneys playbook isn't the only way anymore. I'm a 20+ year appraiser and we built this platform cspecifically for this problem. Two sides to it. Consumers and attorneys post non-lender orders (estate, divorce, tax appeal, pre-listing) and verified local appraisers pick them up. And appraisers refer work to each other, so if an order comes in outside your area or outside your comfort zone, you refer it and earn on the referral instead of just saying no.
The engagement letter, scope definition, and payment-before-delivery you're doing manually? That's built into the workflow. You keep the discipline you described, you just stop doing the mailers.
For someone gliding toward retirement, referral income on work you don't personally do is about the best version of "not shutting yourself off completely" there is.

Happy to answer questions if anyone's curious. you can see what its like to sign up at gethomevault.com and go through the onboarding which allows you to setup speciifc fees for things like complexity, distance..etc...