Exposing Occupational Licensing Abuses Nationwide

Baggins says:

As the myriad of tech companies whom push hybrids and destroy an entire valuation industry are not individually licensed, for their companies or their workers. There is some rather severe imbalance in terms of whom has to deal with such oversight and whom does not.

Just dealt with this tech platform company specializing in default asset management. They left all these other vendor sign up and servicing programs in place. Field service management did not change. Broker bpo services did not change (but did expand to take over valuation services inspection duties previously fulfilled by appraisers), the listing selling title, all of that did not change.

But in their infinite wisdom this tech company has decided that; “All appraisal services are now hybrid”. They removed the option for asset managers to even order full appraisal reo service! It’s gone completely, no full 1004 reo ordering allowed! So as a tech company whom facilitates the linking of these various vendor services and asset managers, they have now affected what is likely to be hundreds of different asset management companies, with one fell swoop of a decision. Cut the legs out from tens of thousands of appraisers nationwide so they can pursue some ridiculous false claim regarding merits of saving time and money on the appraisal service, while then maintaining traditional engagements with everyone else except the appraiser.

While nobody gives a damn that every single other service provider already earned more and took longer than the appraisal services anyways. So quite literally with this company, one can sign up to complete field services and perform tasks like lawn mowing and changing locks, and earn far far far more than the appraiser, and still be in the field, with almost no liability. While the worthless appraisers are only held for their insurance and signature, stuck at a desk, flipping hybrids all day long. They expect appraisers to complete these hybrid reports in an hour or less, have exact pinpoint value, even without applying a single adjustment. The appraiser of course must sign and must attach their EO insurance.

Now that’s a tech company that deserves licensing! So far nobody bothers to license the field service providers, probably because it’s already nearly impossible to find people willing to mow 200 lawns a month and do winterization and lock outs and such after eviction, work with the sheriffs. And one really can’t change the nature of that labor service, stupid gimmicks are hard to apply. I’m thinking about pursuing this line of work and in my state of Colorado, they can’t find anyone to even do this work hardly. The catch is one signs up for complete zones, and then would expect to cover multiple county spreads and manage hundreds of houses in batch order delivery at a time.

What a turn of events, lawn mowing might just be back on the menu! Now carefully consider the balance of compensation between a professionally licensed appraiser and a field service manager laborer vendor, all accepting work from the same asset management companies, all work being assigned through the same technical services platform working with the exact same said asset management companies. Mow a lawn, liability free for the most part, roughly $30-$40 per quarter acre lawn. (more for acre up to 60-70 per full acre). And you get mowing batch orders by the dozens, could knock out dozens in a day or two with time to spare. Could hire anyone to help you basically, no licensing required. Work hard, good pay, no boss, liability free, and end up with meaningful tools and equipment which one can write off with resale value later. Liability insurance is roughly the same as an appraisers EO, yet the actual liability shouldered is exponentially less, like maybe pay for a broken window if your lawn mower kicks a rock, mostly worry free liability.

Now compare that to the appraiser whom will be struggling to complete hybrid reports at $50 per order, as they happen to come in, so a lot of standing by down time and challenging scheduling. The appraiser signs every hybrid report with his professional license, putting his entire career on the line every single time. Each one tied to the appraisers insurance which if anything comes back could result in substantial civil penalties in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars if not more and notable errors and omissions insurance jumps. And you’re dealing with high gravity work where your actions in that single hour of completing hybrid reports could result in people at the end of the line taking substantial lender default penalties of their own, just financial ruin and all of that. Also you’re laying your insurance and license on the line with blind trust as you rely on third party photographers inspectors and measuring services, which of course all of that is now completed by whatever realty agent they lined up for quick low fee tech based inspection services and those guys flip even more volume than you do. The realty agent is not worried about a similar low fee schedule, as they pass all the risk to the appraiser.

All these tech companies, grown up around the concept of exploiting the valuation industry. As our TAF and ASB does nothing to stop the wholesale exploitation, even now exploring the ridiculous concept of ‘certifying an avm’. So that’s it people, lawn mowing officially pays more than appraisal work. That’s where these tech company idiots and advocates have driven this industry. Do the hybrids if you want and good luck, you’ll need it one day when years later the affected parties sort it out in court with retrospective reviews. “The appraiser just picked comps from a national database and did not even bother applying any adjustments, and still applied a pin point value based on a half dozen third party inspection photos.”

So now same old routine in soliciting asset management companies; I’ll be happy to work with you, if you’ll simply move away from the tech companies forcing hybrid work products. It’s the same thing as; I’ll be happy to work with you if you’ll simply assign direct and not force me to work with amc’s. (which will also be an uphill marketing battle as amc’s have a lot of those companies too.) But as amc service was so awful a lot of them swapped to these tech companies for volume fulfillment.

Oh yeah, this is a far far better system than simply letting loan production be in direct contact with appraisers. You know, direct marketing like quite literally everyone else enjoys. But not for the appraiser, oh no, we need even more regulation and need even less compensation. This is the end effect of all the selfish irresponsible appraisers whom think it’s no big deal to work with amc’s despite the ethical shortcomings in the amc’s exploitative business modeling. That and predatory unregulated tech companies on every corner too now. The solution is to release a hefty portion of all this regulation or alternatively to apply the regulation more fairly. But that’s not how it works because; regulation for sale. The tech industry and trade groups gives enough to those whom impose regulation, to avoid such restrictions themselves. (hint; that’s the multi million dollar lobbyist budget part of their 501c tax return statements.)