Comments on: Thank You Wall Street for Killing off my Hallmark Moments

By: Baggins

Baggins — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 02:08:20 +0000

When it comes to daily working practices as an appraiser, I’m going high fee or bust lately. And clients who try and waste my time but never assign me orders get a three strike policy that I keep track of, then the fee goes up, and then I cut them off. I don’t exist as a small business man to perpetuate a failing system. Nor do I struggle to keep this little tiny business enterprise going so I can save some one else a dollar, who’s in a superior financial position than me anyways. I used to be mystified why lenders who rely on appraisers services did not wish appraisers success and prosperity, but rather always put us under the thumb. It’s obvious though. Price and value are distinctly different, and the appraiser represents a fundamental requirement in the application of financial liberty for citizens. We are the checks and balances system within lending. The only true outsiders who are not beholden to the system. As long as we exist, the American home owner base is at least partially safe from total central banking control. This industries demise is by design, which is why I’m not shutting the doors and am not abiding arguments why my services need to be either quick or cheap. I’m proud to not be the cheapest or fastest appraiser, and it’s going to stay that way. I charge premiums. I handle tough jobs. I provide solid consultation above and beyond just handling customers. What is good for other people is good for me, and I never put profits before people, never. However, I do charge a premium, because I work hard and deserve a fair pay in accordance with industry standards regarding related industry workers. That’s just sound business practices. Don’t let the hounds of wall street get you down. Bite the hand that feeds you, and then ask for seconds. They’ll keep feeding you, because the checks and balances systems are a requirement, not an option.

By: Mike Ford, CA AG; SCREA, AGA, GAA, RAA, Realtor

Mike Ford, CA AG; SCREA, AGA, GAA, RAA, Realtor — Sat, 18 Apr 2015 22:00:00 +0000

Outstanding article right down to the point where manufactured nostalgia kicked in. I’ll forgive on the basis of poetic license.

My Dad sold real estate part time in the mid 1960’s. I started studying overseas in 1970 and became a licensed agent in 1971-75; again in 1984-88 and a full time appraiser in 1986.

When I was first trained a big point was made that American families moved every seven (7) years ON AVERAGE. Last week I heard the average is now 8 years. So much for those Hallmark moments. Comparatively few people live out their lives in the same town; community or locale. While I often envy them (particularly when I went back to upstate New York some years back and saw how tall the fifty trees my dad, brother, mother and I planted some thirty years before had grown.

THEN I think of all the opportunity I had ONLY because we/I moved from: Upstate New York to California (5 different places in CA); to Nevada, then to Virginia (rental; owned condo, and 2 houses for parents), then back to California to live on a boat for 25 years-the longest I ever lived ANYWHERE-Redondo Beach and L.A. Harbor-though on more than half a dozen different boats from 24′ all the way to 72′), then back to place of birth in Florida for a three month try out & back to Calif. boats ;then 2 house rentals and my current owned duplex six years ago, where I will (presumably) live out my remaining years..

Hallmark Moments? Hardly. More Shakespearean with a touch of Cervantes’ Don Quixote.

I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

…but the authors points about increasingly risky lending policies generated by Wall Street remain true. BTW-its NOT a Republican thing either. Both parties bow before Goldman Sachs; and Nancy Pelosi’s family money originated in San Francisco real estate.

Barney Frank and Chris Dodd were as much at fault for our last crash as anyone, yet the so called “fix it” legislation bears their names. Lets focus on the accurately described problems rather than fantasized perceptions of Hallmark moments.

By: Judi Crowell

Judi Crowell — Thu, 16 Apr 2015 15:12:05 +0000

What a fantastic article ! I was stunned by just how fast this all happened. As a small appraisal company for thirty years, we were there to see it all change. It surely went from a camaraderie of friends and personal relationships to communing with computers, endless software and being entirely divorced from the human element that made it all worthwhile. We’re not going back, as a society altogether, but I wonder, with trepidation, just where we are going.