USPAP for Great Advice! – TAA Podcast 142

This question comes up – a lot!  It is common for reviewers to conclude the appraiser did not support, for example, the GLA adjustment.  So the appraiser gets all bent out of shape and shouts, “I supported my adjustments!  Right in the narrative I write the GLA adjustment is $65 a square foot!  How can that reviewer say I did not support my GLA adjustment!?”  Now it is time to go to USPAP for great advice.  And that advice has to do with supporting adjustments.  What is that advice?  That advice is to support your adjustments.  Why is that so hard?

Honestly, going to USPAP for great advice is easier than it sounds, although its advice may be indirect.  For example USPAP does not use the term adjustment (or any of its derivatives) until AO-13.  But right there, in USPAP’s definition of credible is the Comment that makes it clear that “…credible assignment results require support by relevant evidence and logic…” Next, in the Record Keeping Rule, is the statement that the appraiser’s workfile “…must include…documentation necessary to support the appraiser’s opinions and conclusions…”  Therefore, the appraiser’s insistence the above statement is “support” for the $65 GLA adjustment is simply wrong.

Going to USPAP for great advice is both sound advice and a simple strategy.  In this example, the appraiser’s support is already in the workfile, just not yet in the report itself.  Somehow, the appraiser had to arrive at the $65 conclusion.  Assuming these component processes are in the workfile, getting them into the report is easy.  Try this:  “Analysis of five comparable sales larger than the subject with five sales smaller than the subject indicates the market recognizes a $65 per square foot factor for size differences.”  Taking USPAP’s great advice avoids E & O and legal problems.  Try it.  You’ll see.