I’ll post this comment before I read the piece. The name “Stephen Bishop” is a penname used by an older gentleman here in SD who has attempted to get into the appraisal business on two separate occasions (1994 and 2002) but was unable and/or unwilling to do it the right way. He is not now and never has been an appraiser in his own right.
He obtained a Trainee license a couple years back, associated with a couple of crooked appraisers (because those are the only types of people who will cut a trainee loose without any supervision) and then complained to the state that these guys were doing bad things. In doing so, he attracted attention from the state on his own substandard work, resulting in an investigation for violation of applicable regulations and ethical violations. He resigned his license while under investigation.
If the author of this piece is the same individual I’m talking about, you may consider his opinion to be uninformed and contaminated as a result of his choice of associates and his persistent efforts to get around the licensing requirements for appraisers here in California. Now, he mostly writes anonymous hit pieces speaking of massive corruption among all appraisers from the privacy of his 2bd apartment over in Clairemont (if he’s still living there).
I say all this and yet I also acknowledge that there are problems in the appraisal business, there are some crooked appraisers and the state has licensed many more trainees than our economy can absorb in the next 10 years. But not everyone is crooked and not every trainee has to sell out in order to make it into the business.
Now I’ll go read the piece and see what it has to say.
