Every single day… EVERY SINGLE DAY I have brokers call me asking to run comps, hit value or tell me they have an order for me but they NEED VALUE.

Turdly, you sound exactly like a Broker… I take it you are.

Brokers order over 70% of all appraisal requests. Every single day I must tell these idiotic broker to take a hike. What that means is they are going to call up my competition until they find an appraiser to hit their value while I sit here honest, eithical and 1/3 the business as these sleeze ball brokers and appraisers.

Brokers do NOT care about the quality of your work, your eithics, how easy you are to deal with, etc. All they want is you to hit their value, period. They ARE screwing up the entire Real Estate industry and until they are licensed to be held accountable for their fraudulent actions nothing will change.

The more honest you are, the better the Appraiser you are, the more ethical you are… The more the Broker hates you.

What one must consider though, while those of us that remain honest, our figures can be skewed by the dishonest ones. When using the sales comparison approach, we may (unwittingly)use those sales that have been slightly (I say slightly because otherwise its obvious when compared to the market) skewed. Therefore those numbers become unintentionally “juiced” which amplify the problem.

Being blacklisted by Mortgage Brokers is only half the problems faced by the Appraiser. My experience has been that Mortgage Broker just won’t pay for the Appraisal if it hits below the mark and the kills the deal. Just yesterday, a peer was threatened with law suits and verbaly abused because he didn’t make the numbers. Its likely that the Broker would have lost but the hasle, cost, stigma and such is too draining for an one man operation. He simply refunded the money and moved on… I wonder if this was the Broker’s normal m.o. for broken deals. The Appraiser needs to be given more recourse for these situations. Mechanic leans as appose to judgment… in other words, unpaid appraisals will result in the Broker being shut down.

As it stands now, I feel most Residental Appraisers feel powerless. Walking a thin line of keeping their ethics and licenese while trying to make a living.

For those outsiders who still feel they know better and resort to using profanity – Read USPAP and your state laws regulating Appraisers… if you can keep from falling asleep and make it to the Advisory Opinions… well first my hat’s off to you but you’ll see that the Appraiser is under a lot of law and guidelines (USPAP). The S&L crisis addressed a lot of these issues. I just feel that there should be more laws to isolate Appraisers from the pressures of the Brokers.

Appraisers should not cave into the pressure of “hitting the numbers”.

Like many other professions in the real estate field, the ethical and honest approach does not usually serve their bank accounts well… and therein lies the problem.