_Commercial Grade is a weekly post by John Cicero, MAI who provides commentary on issues affecting real estate appraisers, with specific focus on commercial valuation. John gets that perfect moment, and now his life is complete, well kind of._

_Disclosure: John is a partner of mine in our commercial real estate valuation concern [Miller Cicero, LLC](http://www.millercicero.com) and he is, on Thursdays on Fridays, one of the smartest guys I know._ …Jonathan Miller

A requirement in the [Real Estate Valuation and Analysis class that I teach at NYU](http://www.scps.nyu.edu/departments/department.jsp?deptId=24) is to write a complete, self-contained appraisal as part of a group project. Three or four bright, motivated graduate students writing one appraisal of a small income property over a ten-week period from start to finish, with all three approaches to value. The purpose is to let the class apply the theory they learn in class to the _real world._ At the end of the semester, the groups present their reports to the class, explaining their methodology and conclusions. I stress the development of good market dataspeak to brokersverify the sales.

One of my students, an account officer in the real estate group of a major lending institution, came up to me in the beginning of class on the day of the presentations and said that I will never complain about the appraisal fee or ask for a two-week turnaround time againthat was so much work! Yes it is! And we usually do it alone, not in groups, and in 2 weeks!

Finally, an account officer _got it_!!…It was a perfect moment!

And it dawned on me that that’s the answer to the dilemma that we’re inthe appraisal lobbyists in Washington must get enacted into law a requirement that all bank lenders spend three months actually going into the field to do research and write an appraisal. Perhaps then, they will _get it._

One Comment

  1. martin tessler December 19, 2006 at 2:56 pm

    3 months is not a long enough purgatory-its like Chinese food or a Big Mac, you’ll be hungry in a short time and forget that you just ate….
    Rabbi

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