Hello, everyone. I'm very happy to have found your site and to have been allowed to join your group. As you can see from my discussion title, I am a former appraiser (actually, still licensed, just not currently practicing) and a current REO property maintenance contractor. I have been a state certified residential real estate appraiser for 9 years and have owned a property preservation company for over 5 years.
First things first: I have read here with great interest and even greater despair what many of you are going through with management companies. Please, I urge you: do not just take it and complain to your fellow realtors. Complain often and loudly to your state realtor association and to the NAR. You have something appraisers never had --- a powerful organization devoted to fighting on your behalf to pressure lawmakers to do the right thing. Management companies and the corruption, profit-stealing, and industry-ruining practices they represent must not be allowed to destroy your professions they way they have decimated real estate appraisers.
For years, independent fee appraisers enjoyed a federally mandated autonomy --- free of undue influence from anyone who stood to gain from a real estate transaction. We were held to a strict standard of ethics and professional standards and were closely monitored by our state boards, and severely punished (at least in Florida) if we violated those standards. We carried expensive Errors & Omissions insurance and were required to attend continuing education classes and "re-up" with the state every two years. Add to that the expenses for computers, property tax and MLS data, forms software, paper, ink, and on and on. All of this for a $350 fee per report, each requiring about 8 hours work (and record maintenance and storage for 5 years). Sound familiar?
A few decades back, in come appraisal management companies. As recently as just five years ago, AMCs handled a relatively small percentage of appraisals performed for real estate lending transactions. Those of us with experience laughed at their calls requesting we do work for them and left the insultingly low fees to the trainees and newly certified trying to build their businesses.
Then the bottom fell out of the market and over-inflated appraisals were blamed. No mention of politicians pushing banks to loan to the credit unworthy (Community Reinvestment Act) or the resulting risky creative credit vehicles. Now that the real perps had their scapegoats and the need to show the public they were taking "action," the HVCC was enacted. Appraisers, independent by necessity, would now be dictated to by know-nothing "phone monkeys" and take a 40% pay cut to boot.
What I see from your posts and comments is that you're now experiencing the same thing. Please, please, please, DO NOT LET IT CONTINUE. You have power we appraisers never had. The NAR may not be perfect, but you can make them be better. Complain about the abuses you're experiencing at the hands of these management companies.
Aren't we all fed up with management companies coming in and emptying our pockets so that they can profit off the work we've done and the good reputations we've built? Resist, I beg you. Fight them off with whatever power and safety in numbers you still have. Otherwise, they'll continue until a real estate career ceases to exist as you know it.
You need to be a member of REO Pro Network to add comments!
Replies