A Review of MEIN COMP: The Last Appraiser
If Orwell moonlighted as an appraiser, and Kafka had a side hustle in compliance, “MEIN COMP: The Last Appraiser” by David Samnick would be their love child. But this isn’t dystopian fantasy, it’s a forensic autopsy of a profession that was methodically dismantled while regulators smiled, and algorithms sharpened their knives.
Samnick’s book is fiction the way a courtroom sketch is fiction. The names are changed, but the faces are familiar, and the tactics are real. Through a cast of fictional appraisers, each representing a phase in the slow-motion collapse of independent valuation, we witness the insertion of middlemen, the tightening of compliance nooses, the scapegoating campaigns, and the final algorithmic coup.
The foreword opens with a chilling riff on Niemöller’s famous warning: “First they came for the underwriters…”
It closes with a line that doesn’t need carving into stone. It just needs to be remembered by anyone who thinks their profession is safe: “They came for the appraisers. Tomorrow, they will come for you. Who will be left to speak?”
This book doesn’t ask for pity, it demands attention. It documents how appraisal management companies (AMCs) inserted themselves into the process, siphoning fees while adding no value. How compliance morphed into a stranglehold. How accusations, often baseless, were weaponized to silence dissent. And how automation was sold as progress, while expertise was quietly buried.
Angela Torres and the Desert Rebellion may be fictional, but the lawsuits, board complaints, and retaliatory tactics she faces are pulled straight from the real-world playbook. Appraisers didn’t go down without a fight, we organized, testified, sued, and resisted. But we were fragmented, outspent, and ultimately outmaneuvered by corporate interests that controlled the narrative, the tech, and the rules of engagement.
As an appraiser, I read this book with a mix of recognition and rage. As a colleague, I’m proud to see our story told with clarity, grit, and zero sugarcoating. And as a citizen, I’m alarmed by how easily this same playbook is now being deployed against other professions, accountants, engineers, teachers, lawyers, even doctors. The tactics change. The strategy doesn’t: regulation, accusation, automation, elimination.
MEIN COMP: The Last Appraiser is not just the story of how a profession dies. It’s a warning to every skilled worker who thinks their judgment can’t be replaced by code. Read it carefully. Your profession may be next.
- A Review of MEIN COMP: The Last Appraiser - September 8, 2025
- The Appraisal Profession’s Perfect Storm: A Veteran’s Take on a Dying Craft - May 2, 2025
- Lack of Fee Transparency: Exposing the AMC Exploitation - July 31, 2024
David has captured the essence of what we are, ourselves, witnessing with our industry being consumed by the comporate government hounds.