Prior to becoming a licensed appraiser, I sought an entry-level position at an Appraisal Management Company. This was my first fulltime position after graduating from college. I had no industry experience, but I was generally interested in economics, which I felt had applicability in the business. Day-to-day, I was the middleperson between lenders and appraisers where my primary goal was to resolve issues for residential appraisals. Along the way, I became comfortable with reading appraisal reports for quality assurance and enrolled in initial appraisal classes for licensure.

There is value in having uniformity in the communication of appraisal reports. It makes sense that someone sitting at a desk in Chicago, IL would want to see the same fields populated (in the same manner) in an appraisal form whether the property is in rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania or urban San Fransisco, California. Sometimes large datasets require buckets of information to be collected and from a practical standpoint, nuances are difficult to analyze on a large scale. Recently, initiatives have been made, which seek standardization and objectivity. For example, ANSI is a residential measurement standard, which can be adopted by appraisers nationwide, so that the same property should always measure to be the same size no matter who is taking the measurement. The challenge with standardization in this case is that some local tax assessors have adopted different measurement standards, so public record information is often not in alignment with appraisal gross living area calculations. This presents challenges to appraisers analyzing comparable sales when the size category is not being analyzed on an apples-to-apples basis when the subject of the appraisal is compared with comparable sales using public record square footage.

MAI Designation; Testimony experience, PA Court of Common Pleas; Testimony experience, Montgomery County Board of Assessment Appeals; Testimony experience, Board of Revision of Taxes City of Philadelphia; Drexel University, Kline School of Law, Best Paper Award Property I; Drexel University, Kline School of Law, Honors Business and Entrepreneurship Concentration

When I am presented with a complex appraisal issue where I can think of no other colleague that is better suited than I am to deal with a particular issue, I feel confident that I have reached a career milestone.

I use Anow for order management, which keeps delivery dates on time. The system is great at keeping track of numerous assignments.

Typically, JB Valuation clients are professionals with internal metrics evaluating performance in a competitive environment. For members of the public, online reviews may be important. This is an area that of the business that could benefit from exploring.

Highest and best use questions tend to be the most challenging and debatable issues in real estate appraisal. In determining highest and best use, an appraiser must consider financial feasibility as well as legal feasibility, among other factors in properly analyzing a property. As a licensed broker with deal experience and a licensed attorney with transactional & land use experience, additional insight is available when analyzing complex properties. Using best practices while appraising is a baseline expectation for a successful practice, but going the “extra mile” so to speak by fully analyzing property characteristics and “digging deeper” than competitors can be a value-added for clients.