The next public meeting of the Appraisal Practices Board (APB) is approaching. Please take the time to register for this meeting if you plan to attend.
Date/Time:
Friday, April 26, 2013
9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Location:
The Sheraton Austin at the Capitol
701 East 11th Street
Austin, TX 78701
Meeting Agenda:
The purpose of the APB is to issue voluntary guidance on recognized valuation methods and techniques in the marketplace. This guidance is designed to be of assistance to appraisers, appraiser regulators and educators.
The following topics are on the Board’s meeting agenda:
• Identifying Comparable Properties
• Appraising Green Buildings – Background Competence
• VFR WG 2: The Valuation of Customer-Related Assets
• VFR WG 3: Control Premiums for Financial Reporting
• VFR WG 4: Contingent Consideration
Lodging Accommodations:
You may make a reservation with The Sheraton Austin at the Capitol, 701 East 11th Street, Austin, TX 78701 by contacting them directly at (512) 478-1111. Please note that The Appraisal Foundation no longer reserves “room blocks” for meeting attendees. Therefore, meeting attendees are responsible for making their own lodging arrangements at the best available rates.
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Please Note:
SRAG Meeting: As announced separately, following the APB public meeting, the State Regulator Advisory Group (SRAG) meeting will be held on Friday, April 26, 2013, at the Sheraton Austin Hotel at the Capitol from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Note to State Appraiser Regulators: The Association of Appraiser Regulatory Officials (AARO) Spring Conference will also be held April 27-29, 2013, at a different venue. The AARO conference will be held at the Austin Omni Hotel located at 700 San Jacinto at 8th Street, Austin, TX 78701.
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Your online registration will assure proper seating at the meeting.
Practices Administrator: Staci Steward, 202-624-3052, staci@appraisalfoundation.org
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We are fairly near the end of the continuing education cycle for appraisers in my home state of Pennsylvania. Among other topics, I’ve been presenting changes to laws and regulations, which include the new Appraisal Qualifications Board (AQB) standards that go into effect in January 2015. You can find the regulations here: http://www.appraisalfoundation.org/
The overwhelming response from existing appraisers is: “Do they just want to make us go away?”
The new requirements will include a bachelor’s degree, as well as — in most states — 2,000 hours of experience under a state-certified appraiser (the number of hours varies, but the requirement to gain experience under a state-certified appraiser is found in all states), plus another 75 hours of specific appraisal classes, including the 15-hour basic Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) course.
In the world of residential valuation, a green-built, energy-efficient, or high-performance new home or retrofit is essentially invisible to the consumer if the MLS doesn’t support green fields (i.e., fields in the MLS data form that enable the listing agent to define the green features). Without green fields, if a potential buyer is interested in a home that’s resource efficient or has superior indoor air quality, for example, brokers searching the MLS on their behalf can’t identify this property type. Likewise, an appraiser undertaking a green home assignment isn’t able to identify comparables, isolate possible premiums being paid by consumers for green features, or identify local market information such as market share, days on market, and price per square foot.
As market awareness of and demand for green homes grows, what is an MLS’s responsibility to its members to provide green fields—and what liability issues should be of concern? According to studies by the Institute for Market Transformation, a nonprofit organization that promotes energy efficiency, energy benchmarking of commercial properties has revealed a simple truth: When information is disclosed to the market, the market has the opportunity to react to that information. Market reaction can be reward or punishment—that’s the nature of a free market. But either way the consumer benefits from the competition as a result of disclosure. The ability then to identify market reaction lies at the heart of both real estate investments and valuation.
