Are you or your firm planning on any hiring trainees within the next 5 years?
My comment: I wonder what the response would be if lenders allowed trainees to sign on their own… remember the mortgage broker days? I sure wish there was a survey on trainee commercial appraisers as I see lots of them where I am. I am hearing that it is back to the “old days” when fee appraisers only hired relatives (because most appraisers were staff appraisers at lenders).
What incentive is there to bring on a trainee? Do you have more work than you can handle? I don’t. Half the year I scratch just to make ends meet. The myth that there is a shortage of appraisers is simply not true. So why would any appraiser want to bring more competition into the field? A trainee would eventually become another desperate appraiser willing to except orders for ridiculously low fees. And No- I’m not afraid of being replaced by an alternate valuation system, if the banks could replace us they would have long ago. The bottom line is when appraisers are so rare that the existing established are working full time for full fees then things might change.
Some lenders now allow trainees to sign. The reason no one wants to do it is the same reason I have. I’ve trained two and it was not a profitable experience, maybe rewarding in that I gave a career to two great gals. But in the end they hate the profession for the same reason I now do. It is just not the same profession: lack of respect, insufficient money for the scope of the work, stress from AMCs micro-managing our business. The profession has been injured so why bring someone else into what we once loved and now regret?
I trained two residential appraisers, after starting my business in 1986, and had bo lay off both of them in the inevitable lender downturns. I decided to not train any more residential appraisers. Commercial would be okay, but I never had a commercial trainee. I learned a lot and really miss having them around though….