Appraisal Matters

Oh, there are so many things I could say about this. It actually is a smart business move, but goodbye to independence in the residential field! Consolidation has come to most industries, has it finally come to ours? We do commercial and I believe it will be years before something like this hits us, [...]

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We are constantly being asked for "comp runs." Lenders and buyers don’t want to spend money for an appraiser’s expertise. They want to KNOW what a value will be before engaging our services. Although I can appreciate that the cost of an appraisal fee is significant, we just cannot take assignments with [...]

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Many moons ago, I started a little project where I wanted to find a way to carry all my field gear with me on inspections. Specific items I had in mind were my large 100 foot measuring tape, an electronic indoors measuring tape, cell phone, business cards, pens, a bottle of water, extra batteries [...]

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We had a great dinner with Jim MacCrate, MAI who graciously gave us three hours of his valuable time while visiting Baltimore to teach a class. I had met Jim while taking two classes and I have been impressed with his honesty, knowledge and desire to give back to the community.
Although court work has [...]

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In this market, it is getting pretty tough out there for people. On the commercial side, many loans have balloon payments and the owners NEED their values to keep rising. Right now values are at best flat. Over and over I see owner occupied real estate investors who banked on their values [...]

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As always, Mr.Mac Crate is right on the mark about our industry. This article is one of the best out there and we are now having a terrible time with being honest and actually saying a market is declining. Why is that? It’s because the lender’s still want to make loans. [...]

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Some of you may know that I’ve authored 4 books with the Appraisal Institute and 12 Appraisal Journal articles, but that’s just a part of my monologue. I help run an appraisal firm, I’m an active day-to-day commercial appraisal and I’ve been in the industry for almost 2 decades. To put it simply… I’m a [...]

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Well, I’m a geek. But even a geek can hate computers. My server is DOWN. I am forced to just clean and wait for my computer people to fix it.
Anyone else have a love/hate relationships with computers? Why so hard? How come I can’t leave Microsoft for Apple?
Eileen

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So often when we appraise properties where the business is tightly held with the real estate, it is very difficult to separate the business from the real estate. This is most common in restaurants, bars, marinas and hospitality properties. When a business is dependent on its real estate to function (an office could [...]

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Well, I made it here first. There is going to be two of us at this blog and maybe more in the future. We are a husband & wife team with two very different approaches to commercial valuation and life in general, who always seem to come to the same location in the [...]

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