Neutral, Unbiased, & Not an Advocate for any Party

Dave says:

You couldn’t be more accurate. I refuse to appraise a property where I am deemed a racist because I gave my honest opinion of value. I just ask the client to reassign. It’s call protecting your backside.

Justin says:

Even my much loved show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver showed the appraiser example where the lady switched the homeowner to a white guy and the appraisal was many thousands higher. I’ve been appraising for 38 years and I would bet that of the 3 appraisals done for that lady – one if not all three are incorrect with unsupported market conclusions, which could easily be identified, but its easier just to call them racist. The appraisers are wrong not because they are racist – they will be wrong due to the sorry state of the expertise of the appraiser and the quality of the report, which is a direct result of the mortgage industry developing, leading and accepting poor quality reports and an appraisal industry that can’t see the value in bringing real quality to the table. Appraisers if you don’t bring quality to your profession, then who is expected to?

Baggins says:

Unsubstantiated complaints against appraisers are common, this is an interesting thing to look into. In our appraisers group once, an appraiser at the state agency described roughly 2,000 active appraisers in our state, and how the regulatory office took in roughly 1,000 complaints on appraisers yearly. Although most are dismissed as not having merit, many others still do get through the gate to official investigation status, representing a substantial worry and time drain for appraisers. It’s just the go to out for many mortgage lenders and amc’s whom are otherwise reluctant to deliver or affirm difficult news. The appraiser is always placed on the defensive, as if the merit of who’s complaining carries more weight than the truth of the matter. How to define advocacy in the regulatory setting.

The best you can accomplish is to handle this internally with the client before the issue escalates further. It’s a fine line to walk but can be navigated with application of consistent ethical principal. Race can simply never ever be a factor. Appraisers can prove race was not a factor by proving they are using consistently applied logical research methods.

This is how the market reaction works, this is the range for this segment of the market, and here is my research to prove it. Reasons why I never adopted automated methods, still remain manually focused, never outsource, never utilize typing services, approaching the final report in a somewhat more self contained rather than summary manner. At least post topical overviews of research within the report, that can go a long way to answering the critics. While regurgitated stats and analysis charts are more likely to miss the mark or confuse, the hand written narrative often provides better laymen understanding of the appraisal problem, and solution.

Also this issue highlights the benefit of comp searching before order acceptance, because once an order is accepted, the appraiser has already confirmed the duty to the client, both the fee and willingness to continue should have already been established by way of at least basic topical research. In my workfile I label this as introductory, and then after actually accepting, perform the same tasks again, just more thoroughly. I rarely withdraw but I often decline.