Hi John I like your comment you put in your report. We put a similar one in our reports. As support help I make sure this similar comment is on the MC addendum and comments in the Sales Comparison Approach. It is up to the appraiser to do the job right and not conform to lender requests that may be wrong or not comply with USPAP. You can communicate the issue with your client and reach an understanding on what your job is. As an appraiser, you know what to do, communicate it and stand on it. If you waiver for every wim then you are not doing your job! Your client will understand if you communicate it properly.

75 hours, that’s less than a normal work week for what is normal in the Appraisal world. I’ve had ACI for decades and not had the problems others have. Not flawless, but far less than what I hear a few others have.

Mike, I don’t think most or even many of us object to paying for necessary service fees. Its like we used to pay for developing 35mm photos and two sided tape; or Forms & Worms gridded sketch pads.

Also, it’s not whining to try to improve our work environment; or to insist upon being treated as the professionals that most of us still are.

Necessary costs of doing business versus UNNECESSARY costs.

I DO agree though that we make our own decisions; though some have greater freedom of choice than others. You’ve offered several timely and helpful reminders to us all.

The last time I “did” 300+ appraisals in one year I was using PCPlus+ Appraisal Software; templates, taping 35mm pictures to the reports; using qualified trainees with preprinted three page checklists, and doing mostly 704 DriveBys for limited liability title insurance company /bank helocs. It may well have been over a thousand-maybe more.

My computer was only a tool then. Not an appraisal delivery system.

Excluding weekends there are only 261 work days per year. Eliminate 6 holidays and 14 days vacation and 3 sick days, there are only 238 days left. I can’t do 300 appraisals in 238 8-hour workdays.

Nor will I try.

LSI was bought out by ServiceLink and Mr Wiley who thinks he’s God still works for them.

LSI?

Wow, you’re very fortunate.

The other one is an AMC that I’ve never done an assignment for, but that keeps sending me silly requests. Some that I in turn post in here.

Combined they may account for 2% to 10% of my annual income. Seems to be about the optimal balance of AMC vs non AMC work for me.

Agree

365 days a year. There are 52 weeks and weekends or 104 days. That leaves 261 work days if you take no holidays or vacations off. Bill, you deserve your two weeks PLUS holidays. Lets take another 20 days off so you only have 241 work days including storms, snow days and sick days.

Bill you work too hard. You should not have to work 10 to 14 hours a day to complete your 1.244 appraisals a day. Respectfully you ‘need’ to do two things.

1. go to http://www.appraisersguild.org or http://www.mfford.com and look up the C&R fee proposal written over a year ago. Its ok to skip to the last page cuz the stuff in between is really boring (I know because I wrote it).

2. Start charging $500 to $1,000+- for almost all SFRs and decline to work more than 8 hours on any day and all weekends. IF you continue to complete one complete appraisal a day you will still earn over $120,000 a year (gross) less office and assistants overhead .

Why, that’s nearly 2/3 as much gross as a Coester AMC VP earns!

On the bright side, LSI has all but ceased to exist.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding the post. ACI Sky is a delivery system designed by ACI and used by third parties but they get a pass because it is not their appraisal software program that appraisers use?

Huh?

Software designers are ‘partners in crime’. It starts with the idea that computers can do things they cannot. Once that erroneous assumption is accepted a philosophy of ‘good enough’ replaces reasoning.

You see, the system and forms we use are ‘good enough’. The process that allowed cost savings by eliminating professional reviews and or technical skills suited to real estate analysis is also ‘good enough’.

Using regression analysis that only addresses 70% to 90% of a property’s value related elements is ‘good enough’.

FNMA patenting and using a collateral underwriter system not designed by licensed appraisers; using a database they admit to as being fatally flawed and which has incorporated the stolen work product of tens of thousands of appraisers is also ‘good enough’.

Eventually using a Zillow or similar type product that ONLY has 90% to 95% claimed reliability when a property value is within 5% of the area median, will also be ‘good enough’.

I am both humbled and “happier than a pig in you know what” at the same time  if something I wrote discouraged one person from buying ACI for the reason cited in GAPeach’s quote! Bless you sir!

Bill Johnson is also right (below). MY appraisal report used to be a typed hard copy. Then it became a deliverable report via pdf in email (or via ACIs proprietary ‘commuting’ system in Lord knows what form or format). Technically still ‘my’ appraisal report but with increasing encroachment into the manner it was delivered.

Somewhere along the way the whores that write & sell appraisal software programs decided simply creating alternative products that could only be made USPAP compliant only by unreasonable effort and time cost by appraisers was not enough.

They had to sell the users of appraisers on the idea that there was no reason appraisals could not be supplied in different formats that allowed them to tamper with, censor, interfere with or to even change the definition of what “delivery” means. That allowed users to use the reports in ways never intended or authorized by the appraisers. Now the appraisal of real estate for loan transactions had to ALSO include the added service of providing absolute property ratings for both the subject and a huge database of comparable sales. Absolute comparisons were never a broadly accepted part of the appraisal process. certainly they were never intended by appraisers to replace relative comparisons like the ones used by typical buyers and sellers in the marketplace.

Of course that lead to telling us that we must next provide reports in XML formats IN ADDITION to pdfs. NOW we have ENV formats. Apparently the XML format is not enough of a bottleneck or separate profit center for our so called allies in the appraisal forms software industry.

Now “delivery” to the intended user-client can be intercepted and indeed stopped completely by third parties or worse, software designed by third parties…even if the use of that software promotes elimination of accepted sound appraisal practices and encourages appraising designed to ‘fit the form and delivery system’ rather than the market.

Need to analyze market conditions in a manner suited only to the abbreviated forms and low cost appraisals? No problem. Just get TAF/ASB/AQB/& APB and regulators to change the definition of the words analyze or report; or any other aspects of USPAP that are ‘inconvenient’.

27 Years to the month after FIRREA 1989 was passed to protect the faith and trust of the American public in the American finance system and appraisal process it has ceased to do so anymore.

Not because it was poorly written. Just the opposite in fact. As originally written it was a great piece of legislation. So were USPAP. That was before each underwent so many special interest revisions that they fail to promote trust in a process at all.

Quite the opposite in fact.

I used both for over 25 years and they are two of the four systems in my PC right now. Each did some things either better or easier than the other (or Bradford) on different form types.

But when I saw the proposed “fraud-promoting” form for the PACE PRO product being pimped by First American and then found they had purchased ACI too, I made a decision.

I will not knowingly support a company owned by corporate owners that are; or were too stupid to recognize that the product they were touting was non compliant within the basic form design itself…even if the service could be made to be compliant. An assumption not adequately proven in most states despite so called “value reconciliation’s” widespread use.

I am not using the term ‘stupid’ lightly. The PACE PRO product report form was clearly designed to appear like some type of appraisal product, while the language was parsed to avoid all obligations associated with a ‘real’ appraisal. The product being pimped is designed to eliminate the need for real appraisals by having appraisers “reconcile” purported market data.

Typical amoral title company conglomerate spawning into yet another area in which experience and the integrity to participate in the best interests of the American public are glaringly absent.

IF you already narrowed it down to these two, then why would you support the one that is trying to take food out of your mouth and is actively working reduce the demand for real appraisals?

The question begs to be asked. Purchased from whom?