Appraisers' Free Forum

Pina Colada wrote:

Any client who insists on having a draft presented is, IMO, hell bent on controlling the value opinion or limiting the research reported.

Is that the ESP method of accusing your colleagues of being unethical?

It comes up in litigation assignments, where the attorney has found errors, inconsistencies or ideas that look like a cross-examiner's picnic. While that has happened to me many times, I have yet to find an attorney-client try to weaken my scope or control my value. Then again, I suppose one could argue the attorney is a co-worker and not the client.

Good point PC. We have given attorneys a draft before too, didn't think about that. Has nothing to do with changing the values, it has to do with making sure any holes are filled and inconsistencies are corrected.

Sorry, PC, but being soaked to the bone in mortgage appraising does narrow one's scope of vision. If it were a mortgage origination client, or a client in a divorce action wanting that draft, he'd play hell getting it from me. But with an attorney as client, I'd take a less strict view.

Note, though, that I've had BK attorneys try to get me to lowball the value opinion. They were no more successful than the MB's wanting higher ones.

I can imagine where a draft might be useful to expand the scope and sell additional valuation services, depending upon the situation.
That predetermined value stuff is a real concern, but the paranoia it causes may also do harm to the profession. Assignments can evolve and to expand a scope without showing them what you've got so far, is not very practical. It may look like you are playing a game.

I could see it in situations like Pina mentioned or in very complex commercial assignments. But SFR lending situations...no way. Sounds like an appraiser that can not proof read his/her own reports, or a client searching for values.

Mentor wrote:Assignments can evolve and to expand a scope without showing them what you've got so far, is not very practical. It may look like you are playing a game.

You are getting to why so much confusion prevails among appraisers on contingencies versus unethical contingencies, comp checks and number hitting. Honest business and crooked business look the same because they both use the same means of communications: practitioners and clients communicating by exchanging ideas and documents.

Litigation assignments are why the ASB's QA on comp checks shock so many that have the myopia Jim ascribes to having been "soaked to the bone" in res-mort work. The quickie premlimanry estimate to determine whether the difference in value is great enough to proceed with the expense of litigation often precedes the request for the big, fat report and the expert testimony.

Pina Colada wrote:

Any client who insists on having a draft presented is, IMO, hell bent on controlling the value opinion or limiting the research reported.

Is that the ESP method of accusing your colleagues of being unethical?

It comes up in litigation assignments, where the attorney has found errors, inconsistencies or ideas that look like a cross-examiner's picnic. While that has happened to me many times, I have yet to find an attorney-client try to weaken my scope or control my value. Then again, I suppose one could argue the attorney is a co-worker and not the client.

That is probably why the ASB info posted by BRCJR referenced

certain types of appraisal practice

.

In such litigation situations, the use of a draft report seems logical to me.

In such litigation situations, the use of a draft report seems logical to me.

Did I say they were "drafts?"

M L wrote:

Pina Colada wrote:

Any client who insists on having a draft presented is, IMO, hell bent on controlling the value opinion or limiting the research reported.

Is that the ESP method of accusing your colleagues of being unethical?

It comes up in litigation assignments, where the attorney has found errors, inconsistencies or ideas that look like a cross-examiner's picnic. While that has happened to me many times, I have yet to find an attorney-client try to weaken my scope or control my value. Then again, I suppose one could argue the attorney is a co-worker and not the client.

Good point PC. We have given attorneys a draft (emphasis added) before too, didn't think about that. Has nothing to do with changing the values, it has to do with making sure any holes are filled and inconsistencies are corrected.

Apparently, at least one other poster thought you did. Anyway, it's just semantics. If you send them a report and they send it back for revision, if that wasn't a draft, then what was it? Ask the ASB and they would probably say it was a new appraisal. Well, it might be a new report, but I would have a hard time going with new appraisal for something like you described.

If you send them a report and they send it back for revision, if that wasn't a draft, then what was it?

Maybe it was a "report fragment." I don't know what a "draft" is. It sounds like the Std 2 version of a "comp check."

Ask the ASB and they would probably say it was a new appraisal.

Not if a new appraisal isn't done.

I think the core question is whether it makes any difference if proposed changes come from the client instead of a co-worker, and whether an attorney in a litigation assignment is your co-worker. I could go ino quite a bit of detail on that, but I'd rather not.

It comes up in litigation assignments, where the attorney has found errors, inconsistencies or ideas that look like a cross-examiner's picnic.

right answer

I did a large 20 property estate earlier this year. The heirs were L bent upon selling portions of this estate because they had to raise cash to pay the estate taxes of the deceased...millions.

The IRS allows them to submit any sold properties as evidence of the "market value" of that property. But the client had to have preliminary numbers in the event the sale didn't take place in time and/or they could juggle what was sold. They would submit only the ones that I appraised lower than the sales price and the ones that were not sold.
In all, they also found that some properties were held in a separate corporation and could be taken out of the taxable pool. So my client contracted me to do the 20 properties but after the draft was presented, they took out several parcels (and each farm had more than one parcel) They took out entire farms and they just recently came back with 2 more small properties that they needed removed because they were under a different ownership on their books (the tax card didn't reflect that because the documents were not filed). They executed the sale of the properties just in time. They filed preliminary estate taxes only days later, writing a 8 figure check supposedly. They are not in the process of filing a final return and finalizing the results. At no time did they ever pressure me for different values.