An independent appraisal practice

What this practice does

Residential real estate appraisal for purposes other than mortgage lending: estates and date-of-death valuations, divorce and equitable distribution, property tax appeals, PMI removal, pre-listing opinions, and retrospective valuations for litigation and insurance matters.

No appraisal management company work, no bank panels. The clients are attorneys, executors, homeowners and their accountants — people who need a number that will be examined, not a number that will be filed.

You deal with the appraiser who signs the report

The appraiser who inspects your property is the appraiser who analyses it, signs the certification, and answers questions about it afterwards. No trainee doing the inspection on someone else's behalf, and no reviewer you never speak to.

That matters most when the report is questioned. The person who can explain a particular adjustment is the person who made it — which is not always true of work routed through an appraisal management company.

Scheduling is finite and tax appeal season is tighter than the rest of the year. If a deadline is close, say so at the outset rather than at the end.

What independence actually requires

The USPAP ETHICS RULE requires an appraiser to work with impartiality, objectivity and independence, and without accommodating anyone's interests — including the interests of whoever is paying. In practice that means a few things this practice will not do:

• No fee contingent on the value reached, on a predetermined result, or on whether an appeal succeeds.
• No taking both capacities on one property. This practice also holds a New Jersey real estate licence. Appraisal and brokerage are kept strictly separate, one capacity per transaction, and the brokerage option is offered before an appraisal assignment is accepted — never after.
• No revising a conclusion to clear a threshold. If a value comes in below what a PMI cancellation needs or above what an appeal needs, that is the answer.

None of that is unusual — it is the baseline. It is worth stating because the whole value of an independent appraisal to an attorney, a tax board or the Division of Taxation rests on the appraiser having no stake in the outcome.

How assignments are handled

1. Purpose first. The purpose fixes the effective date, the intended user, and what the report has to support. Getting this wrong is the most expensive mistake available, and it is usually made before anyone is engaged.
2. Fee and scope in writing. Before the inspection is scheduled. Complex properties are quoted individually rather than slotted into a range that does not fit.
3. Inspection and research. Interior where the assignment allows it. Retrospective assignments rely on documented condition, with any extraordinary assumption disclosed.
4. The report. Comparable sales and adjustments explained rather than asserted, because the reader is frequently looking for a reason to disagree.

Service area

Eleven counties in Northern and Central New Jersey — see the county pages for how each market behaves. There is no claim here to serve the whole state, because an appraiser without working knowledge of a local market is not much use in it.