Tell Them to Find Some Other Lesser Experienced Appraiser
Tell them they are NOT needed in the report.
The march of many appraisers who blindly comply with AMC & other lender ‘demands’ to INCLUDE YOUR E&O BINDER PAGE and FULL SIZE LICENSE COPY in every report.
Inclusion of your E&O Binder in reports is the quickest and easiest way to have your report challenged, and for you to be sued.
Why would you want to do that?
Inclusion of your license copy is absurd. Your license info is already in every single report you submit, or hadn’t you noticed that tidbit of info?
If AMC clerks tell you that you ‘must’ include these items, ask them if they already have those docs on file, which you should have given them BEFORE they gave you the assignment – or in the process of accepting a new assignment from a new AMC. Tell them they are not needed in the report. Those docs have absolutely nothing to do with mortgage loan underwriting, which is the purpose of the actual report. They most likely will back down. If they don’t – tell ‘em to find some other lesser experienced appraiser.
If a client other than an AMC requests those docs in a report, politely tell them that you’ll be happy to supply them outside the report itself, and be sure to let them know that you don’t want your extra personal info distributed to those you don’t know. If they still demand those items in the report – tell ‘em to find some other lesser experienced appraiser.
Take these items out of your templates, if you begin reports that way. Or do not include them if you use a prior report on a different property (merging) to build a new assignment.
Be professional in your actions running your own business. These requests are from amateurs. Quit playing that game.
Dave Towne on e-AppraisersDirectory.com
- New UAD Overhaul: What Appraisers Can Expect in 2025 & Beyond - September 19, 2024
- Cindy Chance Terminated - September 16, 2024
- Key Part of USPAP Not Available from TAF - July 19, 2024
Just for shits and giggles, do you know how many state licensing boards require a copy of your license in the report?
“…Tell them they are NOT needed in the report.” 🙂 I love this part.
look, appraisers who work under the AMC business model are professional slaves. Slaves do not have a say in the work process. They just do as they are told or they are blacklisted. Lets all get real.
If the appraiser is required to provide the binder for inclusion on a panel, is there anything stopping the AMC or lender from attaching this to the appraisal? Just food for thought.
Hi Rachel. I’ve often wondered about the same question myself, if there is a list of all hands whom helped build the file in one form or another? /
It seems that these requests are rooted in the problem of scale. Many distributors seek to run maximum volume with minimal future responsibility. They likely find themselves in challenging scenarios regarding organized document management. The initial drive to inclusion of this data within report was to allow the amc to be completely relieved of those specific long term data management responsibilities. The more they process the greater their long term business costs become.  /
Dave, I’m keen to not including EO but have not heard this do not include license in report argument. That seems benign compared to the insurance binder which only covers error, and does not indemnify anyone. People do get confused about the large eo coverage numbers, easily mistaking that for indemnity or total loss coverage.
Mandatory reading for all appraisers:Â Quitting A Job You Love (Click On Large Image For CNBC Story)
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/17/why-my-greatest-achievement-at-goldman-sachs-was-quitting-commentary.html
Walking away is easy, just step to the door and jump. No parachute required. Blind faith is required however.
Hey. I had wondered what your last day on the job as an appraiser looked like. Ha! In climates of high demand the majority of amc’s are not getting sufficient traction to compete with direct companies with solid base minimums. It may be a challenge to find the direct lender with 400/500 or even higher base minimums, but they’re out there. Once you find them all you need is approval and 3 or 4 of them to run a whole business around. Raise the bar, the clients will be forced to follow. Craft your own approach and the only self imposed rule to follow is demand direct w/ a base minimum which is enough for you. If I need to land a bid I call in instead and then sell an immediate assignment scenario and if they refuse to assign immediately I withdraw my bid. I viewed an accidental email list in bid quote. 50 appraisers contacted over a single order. These companies are behaving like telemarketers. Imagine if all the appraisers took the time to call back. That mass solicitation would be immediately ineffective and actually impossible to continue with.
Your name and address is on page #6 of the report. They can NOT be removed.
I just recently stopped including my E&O. I tell them this via email if they ask for it after submission. For liability reasons my insurance company among other professional appraiser organizations along with attorneys advise me not to ever include a copy of my E&O in each and every report or any report at all. You have a copy of my updated E&O and License on file in my profile on your website. If the lender does not have one please forward my E&O and license to the lender for their file, but it should not be attached to any report. I do not include a copy of my E&O in any report. Disclosing the limits of an E&O policy to a borrower, or a realtor, or any third party has nothing to do with the appraisal and the borrower and other third parties are not entitled to have a copy of my E&O policy.
i used to tell them that my attorney told me not to. Â stopped them every time.
Never include my E&O in the report, I tell them my carrier said I can’t, if somebody wants a copy they can request it
Who is worried about all of this? There are about 75,000 licensed/certified appraisers. Only 31% of these do residential appraisals. Only 3/4 of these do ANY AMC work at all. I really have to wonder WHO CARES? Most of us can only do a few appraisals each week. What if you were offered 50 assignments next week…Can you really do more than just a few assignments each week? Who cares what a stupid AMC wants?
Many of you work with AMCs and want the rest of us to be concerned about “low” fees, quick turn times, scope creep, etc. Really most of us do not care because we are not working for that scum type of client. I really do not care if you do an appraisal for an AMC for TEN dollars….that is totally your choice!
Just my opinion…IF YOU care what any AMC wants you are NOT marketing yourself or your company. Our office has not done an appraisal for any AMC in YEARS and YEARS and never will! Market yourself and your company to the point where you turn down five or six assignments each day….and you will not give a RATS ASS what any AMC wants! Just my opinion….now go do as you please! LOL
A stressful job could actually be good for your health, experts say
The devil is in the details. We don’t need managed, nor is it healthy to apply such management from persons less experienced than us. In proper application, an amc would only hire currently licensed appraiser and realty persons whom have more experience than the vendors. It’s all backwards man, all of it. Wayne, those lackies you speak of are raking record income. This bubble is destined to pop. My buddy ran across a husband wife team which rolls out 14 a week at 375. Systemic risk is here. Will FNMA actually use the CU system to stop these people? They set the standard which keeps me down and keeps you out. Admit it, if those amc people were not in place, you would be able to fold origination work in like any other task.
This article is interesting because under the appraiser amc scenario analysis, working with these control freak companies raises your risk of early heart attack in your 60’s by a minimum of 34%. LOL. That’s some revenge news for the amc appraisers, you’re not in control of your workflow and are subsequently raising your early death risk by a third. No wonder the amc’s can’t find servicers, they all die early from the overwhelming stress. Ha! But what does science and fact have to do with appraisal management? Care to be a disposable hero?
I applaud your discussion over the link between working with AMCs and early heart disease Baggins. In all of the years that I’ve read appraisal related articles and blogs this is the first time that I’ve run across this discussion. Had I not experienced this effect early on in my office I would have never believed you; however, I did experience it first hand.
During the early 2000s I recall two appraisers who died at relatively young ages from cardiac arrest. I then made the decision to hire a young woman in 2001 to take some of the burden off of my shoulders. I was 40 at the time. Over time she was trained to manage our office to free me up for more complex appraisal work and reviews. She was 21 when she was hired. Although we never sought out AMCs as clients, we found more and more of our bank clients turning to them. We were forced to deal with working with them in order to keep the clients. To say that it was a miserable experience is an understatement. I was grateful every single day that my office manager was dealing with the flea bag AMCs because I was rarely called upon to intervene or answer their insane questions. Within a few years the stress of dealing with AMCs caught up with her. She was a healthy 27 year old with no weight issues at the time of the incident. At first she complained about pains in her arms. When she went to see a physician they said it was heart related and inquired about her daily stress level. I wasn’t blind, I was well aware of what she was dealing with each day. During the weeks that she was off work I fired every AMC and let them know in detail the impact that their daily DEMANDS had on a 27 year old woman.  Never again did we work with an AMC. When HVCC hit we lost well over half of our existing client base overnight. The work load per appraisal soon doubled and the fees were cut in half. For kicks I asked a few friends if they would be willing to go to work if their pay was cut in half. I asked a few more if they they would be willing to go to work if their work load doubled. I never bothered to ask how many would go to work if their work load doubled and their salary was cut in half. At age 48 I made the decision to close the firm after nearly 20 years in the business. I loved the “profession” more than you can imagine but simple logic told me that it was time to leave in 2009.
Make sure that you understand the connection between stress, heart disease, and your chosen “profession” every day appraisers because it’s as real as the sun, the moon, and the stars. Bravo Baggins! Someone should write a full blown article on this topic which is never discussed.
I would like to believe that my previous post (see above) makes more sense when you consider the impact of stress and the likelihood of early death in this business.
I have somewhat unique insight because I worked on off at telecom call centers for a decade prior, amongst other positions. They’re often run like boiler rooms with relentless ever increasing performance standards. That may fly if you constantly generate new leads list and move down the line but in the realm of appraisal the influences of such a high pressure environment become more permanent. Amc’s have one and only one list which is applicable to their cause. Working with amc’s these days reminds me more of the outbound telecom sales department than anything else. Except instead of calling, I’m the one that literally hundreds of amc’s focus on. Instead of one aggressive telemarketer calling a hundred possible customers, I’m the one customer which a hundred aggressive telemarketers constantly reach out to. This is what I hope lenders and other appraisers will understand and run with, the modeling is not ethical. Thanks for sharing, your pal, Baggins.
Yeah, my step dad had a heart attack, moms got cancer, and I had a non cancer gut tumor the size of a softball. We’re firmly committed to a lower stress environment and you can’t please them all. You’d probably find my near daily email efforts to these amc solicitors to be very insightful. I often forward them to management and various authors on this website for content inspiration. I continue to advocate for my appraiser peers, even though most of them would rather simply undercut me for quick cash. The world is what we make of it and ethics matter the most to me. Rest assured the concepts I promote on the blogs here are factual and direct examples of my rebuttals to the daily amc solicitors.
Dear Vendor, XXX Bi*ch AMC is looking to add smart and competent commercial appraisers located in the State of ‘Texas’. By working with us you have the following advantages: payments within thirty days and no upload fees.To join our panel, just click the link below…
Howl at the moon AMC.
You must provide your resume, a signed copy of your W-9, and scanned copies of your license and E & O insurance with your application so we have all the information we need to evaluate your credentials. If you have additional certifications or designations (e.g. MAI) please mention that on your application.If you are already registered with us, please update your license information to ensure that we have your most up to date information on file.Feel free to reach out to us if you have questions. Regards,
The modified version of a request to join yet another parasite AMC is posted above. Notice that they are looking for SMART commercial appraisers in Texas. Where is the information about their company? They want a smart commercial appraiser to provide them with a copy of license, E&O, resume, W-9, etc. Where is the information about their parasitic company? Oh…they will pay within  30 days? Pay WHAT? No upload fees (a smart appraiser will not be paying that crap anyway) Damn right they will pay within 30 days….all of my clients do! Tell me why I need them? I wish I could get a list of their smart Texas appraisers as I need someone to mow my grass! Why do appraisers put up with this crap?