John Kendall is a Certified Residential appraiser serving the Fresno and surrounding areas. Mr. Kendall is self employed and has been successfully working in the appraisal industry for over 20 years. Mr. Kendall has also offered to share some of his industry knowledge and insight with me, for which I am truly grateful.
Q: How did you get started in the appraisal business?
A: “Well, I was working a corporate job doing appraisals and around 1992 I decided to go back to school and get licensed. After completing school I opened my own appraisal business in 1993 and have been doing it ever since, so I have around 20 years of experience”.
Q: What are you licensed to appraise? Commercial/Residential/Both?
A: I am a certified residential appraiser, so I strictly do residential properties.
Q: Could you describe the methods you use to do an appraisal?
A: I usually start off by going out to inspect the subject property, and then I will do research on the subject, find several comparables, take pictures of the subject, and do more research.
Q: How many appraisals can you do in a typical day?
A: Due to all the new requirements I can only do about one or one and a half appraisals per day. Before the crash I was able to do about 2 sometimes three appraisals consistently.
Q: Who are your biggest customers/clients? Homeowner? Bank? Etc…
A: Right now a majority of my work is for Fannie Mae due to all the foreclosures and occasionally I will do appraisals for lenders who are going to be making loans.
Q: What are some of the sources you use to obtain market data to make valuations?
A: I use a lot of public records to confirm data that I obtain and also the MLS. I did use a program called Metro Service, which the name has since changed because it was purchased by CoreLogic.
Q: How did the Housing Market Crash affect your business?
A: Since the crash lenders have required that more information is needed to do an appraisal, so now it takes me about 50% longer to do a typical appraisal. Now I am getting less work done which means less money that I can charge. As far as volume of appraisals I still get a lot of work because I have been established for some time, but I have heard of many appraisers going under.
Q: what is your future outlook for the real estate market? And the Appraisal industry?
A:I believe that foreclosures will continue to dominate the market for another year or two before things start to go back to normal and we see some appreciation in the housing market. As for the appraisal industry, about 5 years ago I heard a statistic that there were about 25,000 licensed appraisers and today there are only around 14,000, so with that said I think appraisers will continue to fall as long as the market is weak.
Q: What advice could you offer someone getting into the appraisal industry?
A: I wouldn’t recommend anybody to get in the industry right now because of how tough it would be to get started in a weak market. The chances of success aren’t that great right now with everything that has happened with the real estate market.
I would like to thank Mr. Kendall for taking time out of his busy schedule to share his experience and knowledge with me on the appraisal industry. In the interview I learned a lot of useful information about the appraisal industry as well as the Fresno housing market. The advice that Mr. Kendall shared with me about getting into the real estate industry, aside from the above question, was very helpful and opened my eyes to other areas in the real estate industry. It was a pleasure to learn things from an industry professional, so again I would like to thank Mr. Kendall.
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