Appraiser income and expenses

By on November 11, 2015   /   appraisal, appraisal business, Appraisal fees, appraisers   /   6 Comments
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APPRAISER INCOME AND EXPENSE POLLS

Appraisalport poll, 11-15, www.appraisalport.com
Considering all aspects of completing an appraisal (research, driving, inspection, writeup, etc.) what response do you think best represents your hourly wage?
My comment: Of course, this is gross, before any expenses, auto, insurance, MLS, software, etc. etc. I wonder about those making less than $25 per hour.
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In the past year, have your operating expenses:
My comment: Expenses going up, nothing new. See above poll for hourly income. What is happening with your expenses?

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Very funny appraiser commercial!!

By on November 6, 2015   /   appraisal business, appraisers, humor   /   3 Comments
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The podcast, The Wits End Broadcast, is very “off the wall”, including “fake” commercials. I suggested including an appraiser commercial. It is hilarious!!

Episode 4, the most recent, has the appraiser commercial – appraiser Candy Cotton, short – only 7 minutes long for the entire episode. Hits a lot of appraiser “hot buttons” ;>

You gotta listen to it!! Plus, check out her other 3 posted podcasts. Please post a comment on iTunes or Stitcher.

Stitcher:

http://app.stitcher.com/browse/feed/75222/details Can link to social media, post a comment, get an app to subscribe on your iphone or android phone, etc.

iTunes:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-wits-end-broadcast/id1048415737?mt=2 The best if you use iTunes. iTunes has labeled the podcasts as “explicit”. Sorry, not much in them except for a brief very humorous reference to group sex in an early episode ;>  My iphone has Gigabytes of podcast from subscriptions, including this one. I gotta take off a week to listen to them!!

Libsyn:

http://thewitsendbroadcast.libsyn.com/ – very easy to use but not many features such as comments, social media links and subscriptions.

About the podcast author: The podcast author and speaker is Lucinda Ryan, who edited my paid Appraisal Today newsletter for a few years when I first started it in 1992, and knows about appraisal issues. She is a former newspaper reporter and editor. Lucinda loves comedy writing and always wanted to do more, including writing for a few Famous Comedians and making lots of money ;> Maybe her podcasts will take off and I can say that I knew her “back in the old days”.

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Why are appraiser phone numbers and email addresses so hard to find online?

By on September 30, 2015   /   appraisal business, appraisers   /   2 Comments
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I set up my web site at www.appraisaltoday.com in 1998. Every page has my name, postal address, phone number, and email address. If anyone wants to contact me to give me an appraisal assignment, or for any other reason, they can find me. I get a lot of work from my web site.

When working on an article for my newsletters, I often need to contact appraisers. Also, I give out a lot of referrals, as I am very busy and turn down a lot of appraisals. For more information on my appraisal newsletters, click the banner ad below.

My assistant spends a lot of time trying to contact appraisers for my newsletters. When she googles a name, such as Janet Johnson appraiser new mexico, sometimes nothing comes up. If they are on an old directory web site, the postal address is available. Asc.gov only has postal addresses. Some state regulators have phone numbers. Some appraisal association member data comes up, such as the Appraisal Institute.

Email addresses are hopeless. They are very seldom available anywhere.

Often the appraiser has no web site, even a simple one page with name, address, resume, and contact info. If there is a contact link, you must fill out a form to contact the person.

I guess they just want to work for AMCs that contact them. Not interested in any other clients, I guess.

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Communicating with other appraisers – why is it a problem?

By on September 30, 2015   /   appraisal business, appraisers   /   1 Comment
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Communicating with other appraisers – O’Rourke Pontificates on Dustin Harris, the Appraiser Coach’s Podcast

Dustin and I discussed the big issue that many appraisers don’t know other appraisers personally (face to face or over the phone). Dustin talked about the times he has tried to establish relationships with other local appraisers. One was very successful and the other did not work very well. But, both resulted in one personal relationship each. I have written about this topic before and discussed my personal experience plus the “big picture”.

Online communication is fine, but not very good for local issues. Plus, it is hard to establish relationships.

To listen to it, go to http://theappraisercoach.libsyn.com/ . All the podcasts are there. This one is #051, Communication; a key to running a successful appraisal business. Check out the other podcasts. I subscribe to the podcast on itunes and listen to it in my car.

I was inspired to do a 7-page article on the topic for the October issue of Appraisal Today, sent out Oct.1. I sent out a request for info on small, unaffiliated groups in last week’s newsletter. To subscribe to the paid Appraisal Today, click on the banner ad below.

Many thanks to the 13 appraisals groups I profiled! They replied to a questionnaire I sent and I contacted some over the phone. Lots of good tips for appraisers thinking about starting a group and those who currently have an active group. Very interesting!!

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CU warning messages – grrrr

By on January 27, 2015   /   adjustments, AMCs, appraisal, Appraisal fees, appraisal management company, appraisers, Collateral Underwriter, Fannie, future   /   5 Comments
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A few appraisers are reporting getting CU appraisal warning messages from AMCs. Some AMCs get the messages and and some don’t, depending on the agreement with their lender client.

I sorta believed all the “experts” who said CU would not affect appraisers much, except the many us who do not have market based adjustment support in our work files (which we should have always had). “They” said appraisers’ time for responding to AMC questions will not change. Fannie’s reviewers have been using CU for about two years. Some lenders beta tested it. They all liked it. But, I wonder if it was tested with “boots on the ground” appraisers who actually had to respond to the warnings??

In January I wrote up a long CU article for my paid Appraisal Today newsletter. In the February issue I will have another long article, focusing on the differences between the old and new CU warning messages. They are very different. AMCs with access to lender’s warning messages are sending them to appraisers, such as:

Old message (pre-CU): Condition adjustment for comparable property #<comparable number> appears excessive.
New message(CU): The condition adjustment [for comp #X] is smaller than peer and model adjustments
New (CU): The condition adjustment [for comp #X] is larger than peer and model adjustments.

There are other messages about condition ratings different that peers and model.

I don’t know how our “peers” and The Model made their adjustments or ratings and what they are. I don’t know how to respond as to why mine differ.

Now that appraisers are getting the warnings, they are asking how to respond to them. Who are these peers? What is the model? I have no idea how to respond, except to say “I don’t know who the peers are and how they determined condition or what method they used for their adjustment. I am unable to respond.” How do you know what the condition is really like for comps? There are lots of ways to estimate an adjustment for condition. You can explain what you did. But, who is right? You, peers, or model?

MLS is soo reliable (Not) for estimating comp condition. I don’t think they will like “matched paired sales” on all of your responses for the method you used for adjustments.

Looks like maybe there will have to be some webinars for appraisers, not just underwriters, explaining how to respond.

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Fees and getting C/R vary widely-per www.AppraisalPort.com polls

By on December 10, 2014   /   Appraisal fees, appraisers   /   6 Comments
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Fees and getting C/R vary widely – per www.AppraisalPort.com  polls

As you can see above, appraisers say that 60% or more of their  clients are paying C/R fees

As you can see above, only 9% of appraisers say C/R is under $350. Yet, I suspect that many are working for under $350 fees. Looking at the poll above,  60% or more of respondents say are working for C/R fees. Are most of them doing a lot of non-lender work, VA appraisals, AMCs who pay C/R, or direct lenders?

As you can see from the two polls, they show that 60% of residential appraisers say they are getting $400 or more per appraisal. If you’re not in the 60%, its time to change.

But, somehow the results seem strange to me. With AMCs at about 80% of the lender market and limited non-lender work available (as compared with commercial appraising) who are the 60% of the appraisers working for? If it is accurate, it means there are lots of clients paying C/R fees…

If you want to get higher AMC fees, you must:
1. Ask for higher fees and
2. Dump cheap AMCs
3. Only bid on jobs that won’t take much time and have few revision requests
Why don’t appraisers do this? Fear and Greed, just like all other businesses. Fear – afraid they will never get another appraisal job. Greed – want more money now. You have to overcome this to be successful in today’s very competitive AMC appraisal market. It is your choice to work for low fees and very demanding clients.

Next month’s paid Appraisal Today newsletter will have an article on how to overcome Fear and Greed and get higher fees.

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Lender and AMC revision requests

By on November 5, 2014   /   adjustments, AMCs, Appraisal fees, appraisal management company, appraisers, lender appraisals, Reviews   /   3 Comments
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Lender/AMC revision requests
By Steve Costello
Source: AppraisalPort monthly newsletter

My comment:  www.appraisalport.com  recently redid their web site and somehow their surveys got put on another page. Now, they are back. AppraisalPort has my Most Favorite Appraisal Surveys!! The current poll is about what measuring device appraisers use. Be sure to vote!! Their poll responses were typically very high, 4,000 to 6,000 responses.

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Full article below:

First, I am glad to report that the poll is back up and running on the AppraisalPort homepage. It was down for a few weeks during the transition to the new version, but you can now find it by either scrolling down a bit or by just clicking on the button that says “Weekly Poll” on the right side of the screen.

This month, I want to discuss a couple of recent polls related to lender/AMC revision requests. First we asked: “Compared to a year ago, my lender/AMC revision requests have…?” Out of the 5019 responses, nearly 40 percent went with the answer “Stayed about the same.” Unfortunately the second most popular answer of “Increased significantly,” which took 21 percent of the vote and was followed closely by “Increased somewhat” with 19 percent. These were followed by the responses of “Decreased somewhat” pulling 13 percent of the vote and finally, “Decreased significantly” with a 7 percent share. There are two ways we can look at this data: Taking a negative view, 40 percent of the appraisers are experiencing some kind of increase in revision requests. That is a big number, but looking on the positive side that means that the other 60 percent have either stayed at the same level or have experienced a decrease in revision requests.

In the second poll we asked: “On average, how much time do you spend making and delivering requested revisions on any given appraisal?” We had a total of 4870 responses to this poll. Nearly half (48%) of those chose the response of “10-30 minutes.” This would seem about right for most minor to moderate revisions. Many must be making pretty minor revisions because the second most popular response with 24 percent of the vote was “Under 10 minutes”. Another 18 percent are having to take a bit more time and went with the choice of “31-60 minutes.” A smaller group of 7 percent is having to invest some real time to make the revisions and picked the response of “Over an hour.” The final 3 percent selected the answer of “I don’t make revisions.” I’m not sure if that means they are doing an amazing job on every report and never get a request or if they just refuse to do any revisions!

My comment: these results are somewhat similar to the recent Valuation Review survey results. I keep hearing lots of complaints about revision request hassles. It is good that it seems to be stablizing. Interesting results. I hardly ever have revision requests from my estate clients, except when I have a typo on the address or client name ;> I really hate getting reviewed!! Well… maybe it would be okay if it is an experienced local appraiser who knows all about my market!! I have always wondered why lender appraisals have been regularly reviewed. I don’t know of any other profession where someone else reviews so many reports that are done. I really think this is why appraisers are so negative about other appraisers’ work. I can’t remember if I took the poll… I often don’t because I don’t do any lender work and it sorta skews the results…

What do you think? Post your comments below!!

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Where Did All the Good Appraisers Go?

By on October 15, 2014   /   AMCs, Appraisal fees, appraisers, forecast, future, lender appraisals   /   10 Comments
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Where Did All the Good Appraisers Go?

By Hamp Thomas, Institute of Housing Technologies

Excerpt:

As appraisal fees go downward, quality is going in the same direction. The best appraisers, who have invested years and years in building their careers don’t want to work for a company that they have to check in with every 12 hours, and get treated like a school kid in the principal’s office. An untrained and unlicensed person on the other end of the phone is making their schedule and deciding who gets paid what. And guess what – it’s going to get worse… The best appraisers are finding other types of appraisal work (that values their craft), and the appraisers that work on mortgage loans are often the newer licensees or trainees. If all this Reform we’re talking about is still hoping for higher quality appraisals for use in mortgage lending, we’re in deep trouble. The best appraisers are leaving mortgage appraising as fast as they can.

Appraisers get together and discuss how “bass ackwards” all this “reform” is, and why something that is so logical has been stretched far enough that the government is biting; hook, line, and sinker… If you want a higher quality product, you have to pay more. Look around. Do the best doctors get paid more? How about the best mechanics? The best architects? The best teachers and speakers? The best attorneys? People seek out the best and they are in such great demand, they command higher fees. This is nothing new, it’s just the way the system is supposed to work. So why do we think that appraisals should be different? The lenders, and government officials, and AMC’s think appraisers can be paid less, be required to do more work in each report, and then the quality of appraisals will go up? Come on, this is not rocket science. In most cases, when you add a middleman to any process the price goes up and the quality goes down. Ask Walmart…

http://www.housemeasures.com/ArticlePages/Where-Did-All-the-Good-Appraisers-Go–.html

My comment: AMCs, and the lenders that hire them, see all appraisers as the same. Why not go for the lowest fee? Yes, there are direct lenders who care, and big lenders who have “special lists” of experienced and well trained appraisers, typically for high end homes or people who are top bank customers. Those appraisers are paid much more than the appraisers who compete on fee.
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What appraisal designation(s) do you currently hold?

By on December 1, 2013   /   appraisers   /   9 Comments
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Poll results from www.appraisalport.com
Go there to participate  the current poll!!
7/29/13

What designation(s) do you currently hold?
MAI 49 votes .8%
SRA 491 votes 8%
IFA 82 votes 1.4%
ASA 24 votes .04%
Other 227 votes 4%
Two or more of the above. 92 votes 1.6%
AI associate member only 293 votes 5%
None, but state certified residential or general. 4087 votes 70%
None, but state licensed. 417 votes 7%
None, working as a trainee at this time. 50 votes 1.2%

Total Votes: 5,812

My comment: Once again, I am in the minority with an MAI and an SRA. Probably because I am an “old timer” who started before licensing and also because I have an MAI, which is very valuable for commercial appraising. No extra fee for having both designations.

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