Appraisal Trainees – Creating Your Own Competition

Most appraisers understand that trainees are great, they can fill in forms (or they can after being trained), they can inspect / observe a home (with training and supervision) and they can answer phones and print reports.  They can be useful especially to a larger office that has a lot of appraisal related business activities.

For smaller appraisal offices trainees are often in the way.  There’s often little or no office space for them.  The office slows down when appraisers take time to deal with the training of new people.  It can be quite painful for a small firm to take on a new person.

One thing that most appraisers agree on is that that trainees, after much time, effort and pain, can often turn into competitors.  Sometimes they become voracious competitors and if you are in a small market they can bite into your market share.

So there is a downside for many appraisers who hire trainees, especially in areas with small or specialized markets.  In larger cities there is often more room for new competitors but markets are smaller than many imagine.  If you train someone in luxury home appraisals or commercial property appraisal I will wager that you will be reading your new competitors reports before too much time has passed.  Even in relatively large cities a new appraiser who specializes can affect the bottom line of the firm that “created” them.

In an era when there are many claims that appraisers are retiring too fast and fewer appraisers are available, it’s more likely that appraisers are doing less work and not as many are retired as has been suggested.

Creating your own competition has never been popular with many appraisers.  Keeping a deluge of new appraisers from coming into the industry is what brought about licensing.  So the move to allow more people into the appraisal business by “softening” the educational requirements and / or allowing people credit for backgrounds in unrelated areas is not dissimilar to what has happened in other fields like Nursing.  Lowering the bar by doing things like lowering the number of experience hours does not improve the quality of the licensees.  It’s not protecting the public.

In Las Vegas licensed appraisers get a constant barrage of phone calls from recent appraisal education course graduates who take classes first then try to figure out where they are going to work afterward.  I don’t know how many of those who take the initial appraisal classes just give up but I’m sure that they are educating many more individuals than are wanted.  Education training has more to do with course availability and price than it does trainee demand.

Successful appraisers are good real property analysts, they don’t stumble over basic mathematics.  They are competent using computers and programs like MS Word and MS Excel.  In my experience good appraisers can complete their own research, understand real estate terms and the real estate business including real estate finance and they can write and not just fill in forms (unless they stay in residential).

It’s hard to find someone who is a good match, but the ones who are the best matches are the ones who will take the least amount of time to become competitors.  I’m not saying that anyone should hold back the incoming wave, it makes no difference to me I’m a “seasoned” appraiser and not destined to be in the business for many more years.  I’m just saying that, like in any other field, appraisers should consider the fact that a move is on to accept more trainees, and less qualified ones, and that there are limits to what the market will sustain. 

Real estate sales licensee volumes have been self-correcting in the past, at least in Nevada, and there is no reason to believe that the real estate appraisal industry here won’t be the same.  I say let as many trainees in as you like but only those who can really do a great job writing appraisals will survive.     

For more appraisal information contact Glenn J. Rigdon MA, MRICS, ASA is a Las Vegas / Henderson Nevada based appraiser who can be contacted via email or via his business website known as Appraiser Las Vegas  (http://www.appraiserlasvegas.com), or you can also click on “Contact Us” on the home page of this website or visit my public profile at LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/glenn-rigdon-ma-mrics-asa/1a/30b/879/

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