Chuck Kasky, Maryland REALTORS®' CEO, gets an in depth look into the appraisal industry from Francios (Frank) Gregoire ASA IFA RAA. Frank is a REALTOR® who has over 30 years in the real estate industry as a state certified residential appraisal and residential appraisal instructor. He is the 2022 Chair of NAR's Real Property Evaluation Committee and is the NAR representative of the Appraisal Foundation Board of Trustees.
This episode explores the appraisal industry's recent headlines about discriminatory practices, the research and data regarding appraisals, and how the industry addresses these issues of inequality. You will also learn about the role that REALTORS® and REALTOR® organizations play in creating change and shaping the future through public policy.
Chuck Kasky, Maryland REALTORS®' CEO, gets an in depth look into the appraisal industry from Francios (Frank) Gregoire ASA IFA RAA. Frank is a REALTOR® who has over 30 years in the real estate industry as a state certified residential appraisal and residential appraisal instructor. He is the 2022 Chair of NAR's Real Property Evaluation Committee and is the NAR representative of the Appraisal Foundation Board of Trustees.
This episode explores the appraisal industry's recent headlines about discriminatory practices, the research and data regarding appraisals, and how the industry addresses these issues of inequality. You will also learn about the role that REALTORS® and REALTOR® organizations play in creating change and shaping the future through public policy.
The real estate appraiser can determine the value of a mortgage borrower's most important financial asset, which can hold the key to determining whether that borrower's family can purchase a home rather than rent excess credit, unreasonable terms and build wealth for their family. For generations to come over time. Americans have seen many crises related to home ownership, like the savings and loan crisis, the great recession. And of course our exists our current COVID pandemic and each time housing market players were heavily scrutinized and regulated to van harm to the American consumer's greatest asset. Given the importance of home ownership to so many people, the reforms were generally welcomed by homeowners and largely embraced by key housing market players, like mortgage bankers who understood the importance of protecting the housing market and saw borrowers of color as the future of that market. Until recently, the appraisal industry seems to have escaped in large measure the type of regulation and scrutiny faced by other participants in the mortgage market. Recent news stories have shed light on some of the shortcomings in the appraisal industry where individual homeowners and some researchers have demonstrated that discriminatory bias in appraisals is a continuing problem. Given this it's time to examine the structure and governance of the appraisal industry, particularly as they impact borrowers of color. But what would that look like? And more specifically, what role will realtors and realtor organizations play in addressing these issues? Hello, I'm Chuck Caskey, Maryland realtors, CEO, and you are listening to get real estate, the Maryland realtors podcast. If I were to imagine and describe the perfect person to discuss this topics, we're with, I'd end up with this episode's guest. He straddles both appraisal and realtor worlds, and I'm humbled today that he has agreed to spend some time with us today. Friend SW Frank, Greg wa has been a real estate licensee since 1976. He's a second generation realtor broker and appraiser. In addition to a real estate broker's license. He is a state certified residential appraiser, residential appraisal instructor, and president of Greg wa and Greg wa incorporated a residential real estate appraisal firm based in St. Petersburg, Florida. Frank served eight years as a member of the Florida real estate appraisal board, including four years as chair. In addition to providing expert witness services in administrative hearings, Florida and federal courts. Frank appears as a speaker on appraisal and mortgage related topics. Articles by Frank have been published in realtor magazine and a new one just came out, uh, the journal of PR economics working real estate and appraisal buzz. Importantly, for us as realtors. Frank is the 2022 chair of ther's real property valuation committee and is the NAR representative on the appraisal foundation board of trustees. Welcome to the program, Frank, really happy to have you.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. Check on. I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1:So I was listening to, I just wanna start off, I was listening. People are gonna hear French SW Greg and I was listening to the risk media interview with you. And so I'm not gonna ask you, I'm just gonna tell everybody you do not speak French.
Speaker 3:You
Speaker 1:Spent your entire life explaining that to people, and I'm sure you are also probably sick of people asking you for wine recommendations. I don't know,
Speaker 2:Oddly enough, people ask you for tequila recommendations.
Speaker 1:That's great. Um, but very, very pleased and, and thank you for agreeing very quickly, by the way, I have to tell you, sometimes it takes me a couple weeks to try people down, but you're extremely responsive and, uh, I couldn't be more pleased to have you. So, uh, let's jump in. You know, there are, again, there's a lot of anecdotes. There's a lot of stories. Everybody, all of our listeners have most likely heard or read or seen an anecdote. You know, there are stories out there people's homes being appraised for less than they had hoped. And then manipulating, you know, who gets to see the property and clean it up and whatnot. We'll talk a little bit about that, but I really wanna, I think there are, there are three topics that I'd like to explore today. The first is to get us to a point where we are all agreeing that this is a problem that appraisal bias is real, that it's not made up. That it's more widespread than maybe we thought not that long ago. And, and that would lead us to our second topic of conversation, which is what can be done to address this. And, and a lot is being done not only what could be done, but what is being done. And I know you have a lot of experience in that and some ideas in terms of short, medium, and long term ways to address this issue. And, and then the last topic I'd like to talk about is what exactly is the real, or are the realtors options both individually and collectively as the national and, and state associations, because these regulations many occur at the state level, although there's, there's significant regulation at the federal level as well. And so we we'll finish up talking about what role realtors are gonna play and realtor organizations can and should play in regulating a related but separate industry. And that's, that's a nuance. I think we'll talk about, get to that to, so let's start at the beginning. Appraisal. Bias's real.
Speaker 2:Okay. I'm gonna, let's get, get, get one thing. And you mentioned it, um, a couple times, and, and also it's been mentioned in a couple of reports and that is, that is the, the belief that, uh, the appraisal profession somehow escaped the regulation of other parties that are involved in real estate. Okay. Uh, the fact of the matter is, is appraisers are heavily regulated and that's that wasn't true prior to 1989, after 1989, when Faria was signed into law, uh, every single state and us territory had to create an a, an appraisal regulatory system and create a system to evaluate individuals for licenses and certification and establish a disciplinary system to discipline appraisers that are operating outside the law. Also every single state and territorial ju has oversight from the appraisal subcommittee. And the appraisal subcommittee is the subcommittee of financial institution. FIAC federal financial institution's examination council. So there is quite a bit of, of oversight of appraisers already oversight specifically related to bias. That is something that is, is relatively new appraisers have always been required to comply with state local and federal law. And the fair housing act specifically has a provision that says that appraisers are covered and appraisers cannot discriminate in providing their services. Also the appraisal standards board that writes the, the, the regulations that govern how appraisals are, are developed and reported called the uniform standards. Professional appraisal practice has a specific section there related to bias. And in fact, it's not just racial bias are not permitted to prepare a report with bias to do so is against the law. Neither can they advocate for any caused or individual when they prepare their appraisal reports. And they're prohibited from violating the law when they provide their services. Now the specific allegations, and as you there, I think there's, there's five to 10 over the past two years that have received quite a bit of, of press and quite a bit of attention. Um, those are real to those people. Sure. Um, all we have as a profession, as appraisers, all we have is to, is public trust. We have to have trust in the services we provide and opinions of value that we develop, and we report these allegations erode that public trust. And if, if for no other reason, the profession has to do something to address this, to rebuild and to regain, and to ensure that public trust in our profession. And believe me, we are concentrating on that.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks for that clarification. And when I was writing that, I was little bit, you know, I actually thought, is this really true? So I'm glad. Thank you for that clarification. I'm not typically a bomb throw. I don't really, um, so we do have, again, the anecdotes and, and I would caution people cuz you're right. It is extremely meaningful to the people who went through that. I, and, and they're powerful stories. I mean, when you see, you know, a 40% change in the appraisal, just because of the fact that there are no pictures of black people or African art or whatever, or a white person comes to the door, you know, when the second appraisal comes and the subsequent appraisal is sign significantly, uh, higher than the first appraisal, you, you do have to wonder. And, but again, we always caution people that anecdotes don't prove the case. They don't make the case. They create good stories. And the news, as we know, media loves a good story. And so the next step and, and which many have been, or several at least have been taken is trying to conduct an analysis of the industry and appraisals. And there have been several published as, as you know, and, and some of our listeners may or may not be familiar with that. So I just wanted to touch on a couple, just so to give them an idea, if they wanted to search for them. I, Freddie Mac Fannie Mae, as you mentioned, did one, the Illinois realtors did a good one. And they had a data scientist from the university of Chicago, Google of business, who went through some data that was mortgage application data. And so there are several sources of the data, one of the things. And if you look and read some of these studies, as I have, if you're not a data scientist, the formulas, they share all the data points and the formulas and, and not just their top line analysis and some of the stuff you just, you know, it, it, it kind of your eyes glaze over cuz it's very, very dense statistical stuff. And one of the things to the credit of the people who conducted the studies that I've read to their credit, one of the first things they, well, they say two things. First of all, that this data was not created for this purpose. So they're taking data like mortgage application data and, and then transposing that onto census data, which we know it can be less than entirely accurate. And so we're filling in, uh, blanks. This data is not all that clean. It's not built for this purpose. So they do have to make assumptions and clean up some of the data. And they say that they come right out and say, this is, this is not maybe the best data, but it's what we have. And so they can extrapolate from that, at that, in fact, the analyses, the four or five that I have read all point to the fact that it does seem to be real and there do seem to be issues and further study is necessary. So can, what is, what are your, what are your takes so far on, on to the extent you've had an opportunity to look at some of those studies, what are, what are the top line takeaways for you?
Speaker 2:Okay. Thanks. And thanks for the, the question. And I think it's, it's also, it's important to note that all, although the news stories, a lot of'em are anecdotal, it has resulted in at least three complaints that that I'm aware of in Sam were in county. Um, California, actually, it was, I believe there's a complaint. There's also, um, an ongoing suit of which is being litigated. Now, the one in Indianapolis, Indiana, it resulted in a complaint that was filed on be on behalf of the borrower to the department of housing and urban developed. And I believe the one in Jacksonville, Florida may have resulted in a complaint to HUD as well. Um, but as, as you state, we don't, we don't have the, the result. We have allegations. We have news stories. We have the belief expressed by the borrowers that it was their race or the way that their house was decorat or furnished that had an influence regarding differences of opinion in the value of property. You mentioned I've been appraising since 1977. People have not always agreed people of every Stripe of have not agreed with my opinion of value. What is different about these is, is that we have borrowers that believe that it was their, their race, you know, that had an influence on the value of the property. As you mentioned, the only way to really get too down to it and find out what the cause is to examine data. The source of the data, the only repository that we have is with our GSCs Fannie Mae and Fred Mack, they've got troves of appraisal reports, right? Ever since, you know, they, they don't keep paper copies, so they don't keep scanned copies of appraisals. Now for the past 10 years, appraisals have been completed. And what is known as the, uh, uniform appraisal data set, and the report is delivered to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a data stream with every single field in that traditional Fannie Mae, 10 0 4, Freddie Mac form, 70 every single field is mapped. And as a result, they, they just have access to a huge amount of data. They don't make that available. It is proprietary. They don't share it. In addition to the national association realtors, there are other organizations and other researchers, they would love to see that data. Um, there's only one study that, that I know of. And in addition to studies that support the claim of bias. There are a couple of studies that, uh, you know, find other indications. The one that I'm most familiar with used data from mortgages held by a private entity, not Fannie Fred Mac. And there were largely refinances, um, where they knew not only they knew the, the race of the borrower and also they knew where it was because of location and sense tract. And they could, uh, pinpoint that they also, uh, use some unique modeling to figure out the race of the appraiser and, and, um, they produced a study. The problem with that, Chuck is that study was based on mortgages that were originated 2005 to 2007. Oh. Uh, so it doesn't reflect what's happening now. We really need to know what's happening now. I'm, I'm glad to see that the F FA is leaning a little bit on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to produce some results and to produce some analysis of what they have. Unfortunately, what they've produced so far are just snippets. They're, they're, they're not really conclusions, they're indications that they have and, and even Fannie Mae and Fred Mac believe that additional study is needed. I, I certainly agree with that because actually we said this in, in an article that I, I co-wrote with a colleague of mine in may of last year and was published in realtor magazine. Yep. If there's a problem, we've got to find it. We've got to find the cause and we've got to fix it. You know, it's imperative that we do that. It is imperative that not only real estate agents, but mortgage lenders, government sponsored enterprises, FHA, and VA, and the American public has trust in the services that we provide. Yeah. And if they've got this question in their mind, they don't have trust and we have to do everything we can to assure public trust in the, in the appraisal profession.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's an excellent point. And because so much of this and our, our institutions in general, which is weird to talk about in this day and age, some of our institutions are in question and we, you realize that how much of it is built on trust, you know, and, and our agreement to, you know, comply with the norms that we've created over time and how fragile they can be. So, so I'm, I'm with you a hundred percent on that. You, you said something interesting. And another study I was reading today, raised this with me. We could do a long segment on race. Then that's a big part of how you get this data because you know, race as a construct is still quite fluid. And, and to put, to act like it's real data when it may, maybe isn't. And, and especially when you talk about, I just filled out a form the other day, and it was white, but not Hispanic, but if you're Hispanic, you had like five other choices just within white, Hispanic. So that that's three layers of data. And, and, and a lot of the studies will make a distinction between black and Hispanic borrowers, et cetera. One thing that I hadn't talked, I hadn't thought about. And, and you mentioned it briefly, which is how do you deal with when the it's the buyer's it's the buyer's application, But what if the seller is white, the borrowers is black. You know what I mean? And, and, and, and how do, how does that, how does that work? How does, and, and they're struggling with that, right? Aren't they struggling with that in terms of how to extrapolate data when the buyers and sellers are different races.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, I'm gonna leave that up to Fannie Mae and Fred Mac. Um, but, but, but I'll tell you the nice thing. And one of the reasons I became an is that I didn't have to deal with the buyer and the seller. Yeah, exactly. I was, I I've actually sold real estate. I sold it for three years and I do, you'll tell the story about I got out because I basically didn't like people. I decided I, I just, I don't want to deal with these people. And, uh, and as an appraiser, I'm dealing with the property. I'm not dealing with the participants in the transaction. Uh, so for a typical, uh, sale transaction, ARA, they're doing an appraisal for a purchase loan. You don't meet, you don't meet the buyer, right. You don't know who the buyer is, you see their name on a contract, uh, but their, their name on the contract is no importance to the appraiser. What is important is the sales price and the terms and conditions of, of the sale. Right. Um, and it, for, for a refinanced transaction, obviously, uh, you know, if the property is occupied, the appraiser's going to meet the borrower. Um, but, but again, it it's, uh, again, it, it's never been a, uh, you know, any concern of mine who the parties to the transaction are. That was important to me, always, just to clear my head, whenever I had an appraisal assignment, realize we're not appraising it based on what I like or dislike, it's what the market likes and dislikes. Right. I don't think that I'm unique as an appraiser. Are there people that, that don't do it that way in the profession? Probably. Um, and I would say most likely we have to find out how many and, and how to get this fixed.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a great segue into one of the things that is pointed out in some of the studies is the need for inclusiveness within the appraisal industry. What kind of things is the industry doing to increase the level of diversity and inclusiveness, uh, among appraisers?
Speaker 2:And again, Chuck, it's a, that's a great question. Last year, the appraisal foundation commissioned the first ever survey of all licensed and certified appraisers in the United States. And the whole purpose of the survey was to find out the demographics of the profession. They did get a statistically significant number of risk nuances, allowing the analyst to draw conclusions. What they found is what everyone suspected is that most appraisers are over age 55 or the, the bulk of them were hover there. And I'm glad to say that I'm above that average. Um, it's nice to know. I can say I'm above average, right? Um, that appraisers are overwhelmingly white. They're overwhelmingly male, and there's very few African Americans. There's very few Asians and there's very few native Americans that are in the profession. The appraisal foundation is certainly interested in diversifying the profession, and it's extremely important that we have new blood in the profession. If the profession's going to continue, I want to work forever. My wife won't let me work forever.
Speaker 1:I know what that feels like.
Speaker 2:And, um, so with a baseline, so we knew where we were. We now have something to measure as to whether we're making progress primarily with diversifying. One of the problems with new members in this profession is the, the means by which an individual becomes certified, right? In addition to education, a certified appraiser and a licensed appraiser need experience the experience under the, the current scheme requires that the individual be supervised by a certified appraiser to become certified. In addition to 200 hours of appraisal related education, an aspiring appraiser needs 1500 hours of supervised experience, um, gained over at least 12 months. Uh, there has been an alternative to this supervision, but has not been widely adopted. So the razor qualifications board, which is the organization authorized by Congress to actually develop the qualifications, to become an appraiser, has recognized and, and adopted something called practical applications of real estate appraisal. Okay. Which is essentially a means for an appraisal to gain experience without a supervisor. It's more of a technologically oriented training and experience producing program where the individuals also checks in with the mentor periodically, the, the per program is, is expensive to develop, but there are at least two being developed now. And there's at least five that are in the planning phase. All the Korea programs will eventually have to be approved by their pairs of qualifications board, but more importantly, they have to be accepted by the state regulatory agencies. I mentioned previously. Okay. So a joint work group between R's real property valuation committee and ne R's fair housing policy committee last year at, at our convention in San Diego made a recommendation that NAR encouraged state associations of realtors because they are active police and in the regulatory circles to encourage their state legislature and or their state regulatory agency for appraisers to promote diversity in the profession, by allowing appraisers to gain exp aspiring appraisers to gain experience through practical applications of REALIS, state appraisal. We also encourage state associations to talk with their legislature and their state regulatory agencies to allow experience gained without a traditional client and or through practicum courses. Okay. Part of the problem with the supervisor trainee model is that legally the supervisor is responsible for everything that that trainee does. Right. Right. Um, as a former regulator, I have been involved in disciplining appraisers because they improperly supervise their trainees. So it's, it's a tremendous liability to, to take on a trainee. Also, you have the immense responsibility of training them. So this provides an alternative. Okay. And, uh, your third part of our talk here has to do with where do I see of the realtor organization and appraisers? First of all, I am a realtor. There's plenty of appraisers that are realtors without a broker's license. Yeah. We're part of a real estate business. Although there are organizations specifically for those in the valuation profession, I consider the national association realtors, my home for this profession, I do belong to two other appraisal only organizations, but let's AR is the voice of real estate. And ne R has the ability to get things done. NAR is also demonstrated that they are committed to fair housing and equal opportunity for all. And I think that this is right in their wheelhouse. And I think that state associations can really demonstrate that they're interested in curing the ills by getting involved and getting active in having a voice in appraiser regulation and, and what it takes to become an appraiser. I think there's a, a tremendous opportunity here in Florida. We met last week for our annual meetings. This was a topic of discussion at our public policy committee meeting. And it's also gonna be, we're gonna meet in two weeks in our state capital again. And I'm sure that this is going to be a topic of discussion there. The Florida real estate appraisal board is considering a rule change to allow per and Florida is not the only state regulatory board that is considering this change and considering adopt it's a huge range. But I think, I, I think that it, it is it's really needed to help diversify the profession and give a, a whole slew of people, more of an opportunity to enter the profession.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, 1500 hours been just for scale that's, that's virtually a full-time job for a year.
Speaker 2:Uh, yes.
Speaker 1:Right. I mean, you figure 40 hours a week, 50 that's two 22,000 hours or whatever, you know that, so wow. That's, that's steep and, and necessary. I'm not suggesting it isn't, but, but yeah. So alternatives to, uh, training. How about outreach, uh, what kind of other kind of, of initiatives are you seeing out there to help diversify the well,
Speaker 2:In addition to that Fannie, uh, Fannie Mae actually is helping to, uh, to fund a, I, I can't remember the, the exact name of theirs. The appraisal Institute had a program for a couple of years. The appraisal foundation has just a adopted a program and is trying to find corporate sponsors to sponsor a qualified applicant. Um, and they're concentrating on minorities and veterans, ah, to fund their Peria program and also to pay their dues to an appraisal organization for at least one year to help them get on their feet. Okay. The appraisal foundation of has a number of committees, just like the national association of realtors, the, the difference with the appraisal foundation. There's so few of us on the board of trustees, we all serve on multiple, multiple committees. Uh, I serve on their diversity equity and inclusion committee and the veterans outreach committee, veterans outreach committee hosted a webinar for veterans that are interested in entering the appraisal profession. Half of the people that were on this webinar were minorities based on what they look like on my screen. And we were able to match up just through one, one hour webinar, three of those aspiring appraisers with supervisors, uh, that were participating on the call. Great. Um, and, and some of'em were corporate, uh, in addition to that, the appraisal standards board appraisal standards board is the organization that writes the standards that appraisers must comply with, right. Not just real property appraisers, but also assessors, uh, personal property, appraisers and business appraisers. Okay. Uh, but they also write the standards for real property appraisers. I mentioned before the, there was always a reference to compliance with the law and completing assignments without bias, but every single appraiser, a real estate appraiser in the country is required to take a seven hour course on the uniform standards every two years in order to renew their license. The seven hour course that was introduced late last year includes a significant section. I believe it's over 30% of the course sure is based on fair housing and anti bias. Oh. And, uh, it, and it's not, it's, it's done not only to inform appraisers as to the allegations that are coming out, but how to avoid bias in their appraisal development and avoid bias in their appraisal reporting. Very similar to the, the article, you know, just a, a that, that came out today in realtor term magazine, online, certain words in phrases, which may seem benign. And in fact, those words and phrases are used every day by real estate agents. If an appraiser uses those words and phrases, they may be either relaying their own bias or allowing people to read the report and say, Hey, this report is trying to tell me something yeah. About the people that live in this neighborhood, which is not correct. It's improper. And we mean in the appra profession as an obligation to inform appraisers how to write their reports properly and avoid bias.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And, and I, and I am a firm believer that to, to at least a certain extent, it may be greater than I'm that I under didn't understand that a lot of the bias is, is implicit and unconscious. And it, you know, it's not, it's not a conscious thing. Like you said, there's a certain demographic that people may not know that they're being biased. It's just the way they were trained and the way they're steeped in these traditions. And, and these are words and phrases, as you said, they're familiar with. Uh, and, and so a lot of this is education, uh, training, and again, becoming more inclusive, but I'd like to, I'd like to end with something that you touched on, uh, which is realtor organization's role in this. And it's, it's a delicate balance though, isn't it? Because, you know, we have on occasion expressed opinions on practices in other areas of real. I mean, we are in the we're in the ecosystem. There's no question about that. But by the same token, we have separate licenses, licensing boards at the state level, as you, as you mentioned, and, and, you know, very, very well. And, and on occasion we have had resistance for lack of a better term. And, and, you know, we've actually had people come and say, Hey, you know, we have a board, we have a license, we have a, uh, we have a disciplinary process. You know, we don't go to the real estate commission to talk about how you do your business. You know, why are you Medling in hours? And I don't see that necessarily with the appraisers, but it, it is a balance. Isn't it? I mean, it, it, we are, like I said, we're in real estate, uh, it's all the same transaction, but would home inspectors, you know, would we like go to the home inspector, uh, license authority and, or go to the home inspector trade association and tell them how to do their business anymore than we would want them to come in and tell us how to do hours. So how, how are, should we be looking at and approaching that balance? And I, I looking for common ground, of course, but how do, how do we navigate that?
Speaker 2:The thing that's all Like, I, like I said, I, there are plenty of appraisers that belong to the national association realtors, right? Their state and their local association. They don't have a real estate license. Right. The difference between us and home inspectors is we are in the real estate business, home inspectors are not. Yeah. And because we are realtors, I don't, I mean, I, I invite, I mean, I'm individual that likes to get things done. I like to get things moving in a positive direction. My, you know, my motto has always been improving the real property appraisal profession when, uh, I wanted to have amendments to Florida's appraisal license law. Uh, although I talked to appraisal organizations, I knew to get things done, the Florida realtors would have to be involved. Um, at the very least the Florida realtors would be consulted by leaders in Florida's house and Senate and by the relevant committees, right. To find out Florida realtors position, right. If Florida realtors nix it, it was isn't going to happen. And in, in this case here, again, I believe the, the national association realtors, when there is legislation, or there is regulation that affects real property, appraisers AR is going to be consulted, right. Although we are a minuscule fraction of the membership of the national association realtors, since my in, you know, start of involvement, which started in about 1992, AR has paid attention to their appraiser members. Yeah. Of it. No, wasn't always that case. They pay attention right now. I know that there are people in leadership and in staff, both in Chicago and in DC that I can talk to. And I'm not the only appraiser that they talk to. They are interested. They recognize that appraisers are part of the real estate business. Although we have different obligations to our clients and customers, we all adhere to the same code of ethics, right. We have the same ideals. We all believe in private property rights. We all believe in the benefits of home ownership. And, and I think for only that reason, it is imperative that we think of ourselves as family. Do we always agree? No. Um, but, um, as a result of understanding, you know, making an attempt to understand the role that everybody has in a transaction, I think that we end up providing better services to our clients and customers. Um, and the more that NAR and state associations are involved to make sure that that regulation of licensees either real estate licensees or appraisal licensees is focused on the right things. Yeah. The better offer are going to be,
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that a great roadmap and it's collaborative, but leveraging our advocacy. Uh, and you're right. W w within real estate, you know, we're lucky enough, we're not lucky. We built it over many, many years. Lucky, you know, we, we built that and, and that infrastructure, uh, and our advocacy is in place and you're right. They, they call us, you know, Hey, what do you guys think about this bill? And we can use that, uh, bringing in the appraisers to, you know, discuss next steps. So I, I wrote a note, uh, you mentioned public policy, our public policy committee meeting is coming up, uh, next week. So I'm gonna put that, you know, put that on the agenda for us all. So that's a great that's roadmap, as I said. So, um,
Speaker 2:One of the other things that we suggested Chuck is that state associations create some type of forum, some type of means for appraisers to participate okay. In their state association. Yeah. And, um, uh, you know, again, I've, I've had certain state CEOs, um, contact me and say, you know, not every state is as big as Florida. We don't have the money to do that kind of stuff. Just give appraisers an opportunity to have their voice heard, consult them, make them feel that they're part of the team. And, uh, you know, again, I think a lot of us are reasonable people. We understand we're not gonna get every last thing that we want, but it's nice to be consulted. And, uh, you know, Hey, sometimes getting a, a point of view from one who is not an advocate for parties to a transaction, somebody who is used to be an independent objective and impartial getting their point of view, but could be beneficial. I know that, you know, my CEO, when I was a board president in 1992, she told me that I was the best president she ever had in 1992.
Speaker 1:There you go. Yeah, we're good that way. And you're think, well, thank you for that. And then you get home and you're like, wait, what? That's one of our, that's one of our superpowers. Well, Frank, it's been a, it's been a real pleasure. And I can't thank you enough for taking the time to be with us today and to our listeners. Thank you for the privilege of your time. This is get real estate, the Maryland realtors podcast. Again, I'm Chuck Caskey, Maryland realtors, CEO, thanks as always to our esteemed producer, Joshua Woodson, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts like us. Share us, give us five stars. If we've earned them. And most importantly, give us feedback, including guests you'd like us to invite or topics to explore. So take care, stay safe. And today I'll leave you with this thought from one of my favorites, Edgar Allen Poe words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite power of their reality.