The Truth - Sometimes It's Not Pretty

[Dee Dee]

Steve,

I still vividly recall my trainee years, but the one thing that stands out more than anything else is what an incredibly humbling experience it was.

It wasn't until I started training that I found out that what I learned in my initial classes was just the tip of the iceberg. What didn't seem so tough in book theory was considerably more time consuming in actual practice, at least if it was done properly. I remember pounding my head against the desk wondering if I would ever be able to get all the way through a report without making mistakes that would slow me down. My mentor was the type that if I missed a better comp or something in the inspection, she'd make me go back out into the field to take a photo or remeasure until I got it right, while still staying on schedule to meet the deadlines on other assignments in various stages of completion.

Often it felt like my job was some kind of demented circus act in which I had to juggle four flaming torches with one hand while spinning a glass plate on top of a stick with the other, and at the same time ride a unicycle in a ring surrounded by clowns who's sole purpose was to heave shovels of crap at me in an attempt to bring down my daily act. My ability to successfully survive was directly linked to how big my paycheck would be.

Does that sound familiar to anyone?

 

[Carnivore]

Steve,

One way to make more money is to bump fees when its justified. You are not on salary like a municpal code inspector so that final fee should have been bumped $25.00 to $50.00 bucks for waintong around. Also, you might thnk about chargeing same day delivery service to some of the cleints. Why hire a same day service when you can do it while delivering pizza!

Heres a good suggestion. Ask your mentor if you can have 100% of final fees. Thats what I pay my trainee.

Also, see if he wont let you try and get some 2075 work. Low liability and maybe you can geet 75% of the fee!

keep it up big guy, youll make it.

 

[Jungle Boy]

Steve

I know that you came in with a lot of life experience.
So did I. ( supervising construction workers, managing jobs, and dealing with customers for the last 9 years prior to appraising. And keeping my relationship with my wife & kids intact thru that episode, thank God.)
I now have about 5000 hours in appraising.
Now I'm thinking 10,000 hours before hitting the streets on my own.
If it takes you more than 2000 hours to get the hang of things, don't consider yourself as having a glass half empty. Remember, the glass is always half full!

 

[TC]

Steve,

Andrew has a good idea, get 100% of all construction inspection fees. I had a boss who did exactly that, it really helped out especially since that office did a lot of new construction appraisals.

TC

 

[Mike Simpson]

Pam-

I thought it was an excellent post especially considering some of the silly remarks made by newbies/wanna-be's lately.

An individual who just landed their first job posted recently that seasoned appraisers are scared of the large number of trainees coming into the field. HONESTLY! Trainees who haven't researched the field they're coming into properly are hardly competition for seasoned appraisers with a glut of experience, education & contacts! The trainees are the ones who should be scared considering the future of the industry they've spent their time, money & energy to break into has some serious issues to straighten out (not to mention the first significant downturn in three years--due to fewer & fewer refi's).

I'd think newbies/wanna-be's would want advice rather than to lecture "seasoned appraisers." With attitudes like these--they might make better loan officers or real estate agents!

My $0.02!

-Mike

 

[Mike Simpson]

Frank-

I just love the rocket science analogy;

Rocket science isn't rocket science--not when NASA confuses the metric system with the U.S. system & sends a billion dollar explorer "rocketing" past Mars!

I've performed assignments in my career (as have many others on this Forum) which would blow the "appraising isn't rocket science" commentators minds. AVM's certainly couldn't have offered an accurate opinion of value.

Some of my best clients are real estate agents with difficult or challenging properties which have not sold for a variety of reasons. They call me & pay me well to help them out. They've a lot more respect for appraisers than to insinuate "yesterday's gas station attendents" (as one poster put it) could do their jobs, and they know they enough to understand the value of a qualified appraiser.

-Mike

 

[Steve Gish]

Steve,

TSK Tsk waiting an hour. You are new ask pam if she would have waited an hour.

:rofl:

Pam's not going hungry.

Besides, it was a 30 minute drive out to the property and I wasn't going back out there a 5th time. Long funny story I'll tell another time. Oh what the heck.

Supv calls me one morning and says, meet me out here and bring your sketch pad, I want to you see this house I'm appriasing.. good practice for you.

So I hustles down there and the house is basically sticks with walls and subfloors and a roof. We spend an hour walking around and talking about it, he quizzed me while I measured and sketched, what's this and what's that, what do think this room is??? (This was 2 weeks ago)

Next day I come in and he say's guess what, that house we did yesterday, wrong address, would you please go down and measure and sketch the house next door. Oh yea, sure let me drop what I'm doing 'cause you did the wrong house.... (trip #2)

Right house... $635,000..4,200 SF+.. 4/3.5, nice house. Two and a half hours to measure and sketch... in the rain, muddy boots, they're putting in the hardwoods today.

Yesterday, supv's taking the day off, LO's sidekick call's, where's the Final Cert on that house? LO's in Dallas today, we don't have the file and we close at 3pm. Well, it's not my house, I don't know, can't find the supv....

Ok, I say's I'll do it, so off I go, drive down to the house (trip #3), looks good, a few things getting finished up. Carpet guy is finishing up, sod guys are in the back yard laying sod, trim painters are doing touch-ups, home owner is there with the decorator, builders head guy is there tidying up last little things, mirrors are going up in the master bath... I check every light switch, plumbing fixture, door hinge, window crank, intercom, cent vac, and ceiling fan I can find. Everything I can think of. I go outside, take a picture of the house and street and I'm back to the office. It's about noon now.

Back at the office, I finally get ahold of the other trainee and ask him, have I forgotten anything, first thing he say's is "Is the sod down", well no, but it's there. It's not finished unless the sod's down. Well, my picture showed this nice "done" house with a dirt front yard.


3 hours to closing... I go back to the house (trip #4) and three sides are sodded but not the front. I had to wait until they were done and out of the way to take the picture. I get back to the office at 2pm, the supv finally shows up and I get the report emailed at 2pm, they close at 3pm. This morning I have an LO in my office thanking me profusely for helping him get his loan closed (he got back from Dallas).

Why'd I wait an hour... 1) It's one of our best clients, 2) I didn't know any better, 3) I felt guilty for almost messing it up.

I charged them $75 and my supv said I was very generous to them. Oh well B)

Another day in the life of a trainee.. and it wasn't even my appraisal.

 

[Chris Colston]

Steve??? Are there any more at home like you?? :rofl: You learn by doing, and this is a great example.

In reality, if you saw the workers placing the sod and you knew it would only be a matter of an hour, I might have gone a gotten a cup of coffee, or better yet, taken a picture of the sod at the sight and the guys putting it down and declare the property complete.

Around these parts the builders have a tendancy to not place the appliances in the kitchen until a few minutes before walk thru. Most of my clients allow me to claim the subject is complete if the appliances are at the subject site. They might still be in the boxes just as long as they are at the subject's location. I did a final inspection one time, where the range was still on the truck coming from up north in a snow storm. The estimated time of arrival was sometime that day. I had already been to the house several times that week for other inspections. I told the buyer and the builder, "have a range in the house within 1 hour, I don't care where you get it from, I'll be back." (I happened to know that down the street was a house with the exact same range as contracted by this buyer, cuz I had completed that final inspection a hour before). I went and had lunch.

Well lo and behold, I get back to the house in an hour and there is the range! Deceptive?? Maybe. Does it get the job done, YES. Does the buyer get to close on time and not lose their rate lock? YOU BET. The range that was on the truck went back into the house that hadn't closed yet. This is not how I usually work, but sometimes you have to bend just alittle.

Oh yeah, another point, the buyers moving van was sitting on the street waiting to unload and they come through the same snow storm, so I figured the truck with the range couldn't be too far behind.

 

[Pamela Crowley (Florida)]

1+/- hour? Pam probably would have gone to get something to eat in between or made phone calls or driven around to see what's new in the area... IF I didn't have somewhere else to be that hour later.

#1) I warn the LO that I will be charging $50 for each and every time I arrive to find it's not really finished!!!!!!!

#2) I DO charge for each and every trip.

#3) My minimum charge for the finished product is $75. When I have to measure to make sure the finished product matches what the plans/specs said it was going to be, my minimum is $100.

Come on gang. I'm 'tough' - I'm not 'mean'. :yellowblack:

Steve, you're great!!!

 

[Jungle Boy]

Originally posted by Pamela Crowley (Florida)@Oct 11 2003, 05:49 AM


Steve, you're great!!!

AND ONE TOUGH COOKIE !! :yellowblack: