4324 Perlita Ave. Los Angeles

Perlita Project Passive Home

High-Performance Home Field Training Workshop

I attended a Passive Home workshop for appraisers on April 7th at the Gaucher residence.  This is a home that was originally built in 1906 and the owner Xavier Gaucher did a complete retrofit of the original home to a passive home.  This house is spectacular!

Original Home

Debra Little, a certified residential appraiser from Northern California organized this workshop with Xavier. Debra has created a site where Contractors, Homeowners, and Real Estate Professionals can input data to help compute the savings that can result from High-Performance construction methods. The name of the site is Ajohp.org  (click the link to visit).

This site gives the visitor a method through a built-in app to affirm the VALUE of specific high-performance features of passive homes and other homes with various types of energy efficient upgrades.  This is a tool that may help appraisers be able to apply proper adjustments when doing appraisals on any high-performance home. The results of the data provided may be included as a part of the report to justify the VALUE adjustments that have been applied to the chosen comparables.  For example, this seems much better than just picking a number out of thin air as an adjustment for solar panels and dual pane windows!

Click image for more information on how to use the app in AjO

I am so fortunate to have connected with Debra through an online appraiser forum. Debra and Xavier teamed up to present this free informational workshop. Thank You to Debra for organizing this informational workshop and also to the Gaucher family for opening their home to us!

What is a Passive Home?

Click Here to View & Download a Free Informational Pamphlet

I hope you find the information in this post useful!  Thank you for taking the time to visit my site.

Doug

Measuring a property with a Disto is a great way to increase both the speed and accuracy of any inspection.

In my early days as an apprentice bricklayer, we used a transit sight level to check the elevations when laying out footings or to set the course heights for our brickwork. This process required two people one using the sight level and another person to hold the sighting rod or a tape measure. See photo below, this was taken when we were starting construction of my Grandma Casady’s new home in 1976… ( I’m the young guy on the left LOL! ).

Laying out Grandma Casady’s new home in 1976

I wish we had the laser products of today back then. This would have made doing our job so much easier and more efficient in those days. When laser technology became available I was ready to make the change. I invested in the tools and also invested the time to learn how to use laser measuring devices to increase my productivity on the job.

When I started in the appraising industry as a trainee I was surprised to see the resistance that most seasoned appraisers have to the use laser technology when gathering data. I guess it is that many do not want to take the time to learn something new. It seems that in some cases most people do resist change when they have done things the same way for many years.

Possible Measuring Option to Help Locate the Laser Dot…

The biggest problem that most people face is locating the “red dot” of the laser device when measuring the outside of the property. I have been wondering… Why not measure from the inside of the home and then include the thickness of the exterior walls for the overall outside measurement? This would eliminate the dreaded search for the “red dot” in bright sunlight or better yet during periods of inclement weather (rain, snow, heat, and cold!)  while doing an inspection.

I attended the Alamode Appraiser Road Show seminar held in Austin TX back in August of 2014. These were great classes that helped to peak my interest in mobile appraising. Using my iPad as a way to record the data that is gathered has helped me to organize my process as a trainee. I enjoy using my Disto D810 and Ipad mini together. However, I have not had much success with using the Bluetooth feature for doing sketches yet. With time and more practice, I will become more proficient with all of the features that it has to offer.

Disto D810

Thanks for reading my post,

Doug

Good day to you from So.California!

I am grateful that I have been using McKissock as my choice for taking my CE classes. I wasn’t sure how difficult finding a location to take my proctored exams would be. I was able to find a service at the Placentia CA library which worked out great for me. The charge was $50.00 per exam, for a total of $150.00 for the 3 mandatory course final exams. I am ok with paying the fee to the library because if there are any questions that arise in the future about who proctored the exams I have that covered.

I enjoyed the classes and learned about appraising Modular and Manufactured Homes. I wasn’t sure how strict the guidelines were, but after taking the class I have some insights into the restrictions that will help me in the future. I had no idea that the NADA valuation book would be used by real estate appraisers to help them arrive at a value for a Manufactured Home.

The Statistics, Modeling and Finance course was also helpful as I am becoming more comfortable using the HP 12C calculator. It really is quite amazing how many functions and uses were designed into that small calculator many years ago.

The Advanced Residential Applications and Case Sudies course helped me to understand more about how many different ways that there are to take title to a property. I remembered it from some of the classes that I took to get my initial license and the case studies in this class helped me understand more about Leasehold properties and ownership rights.

I get frustrated at times when I keep paying money for more CE classes and at this time I am limited as to the number of reports I can do with my supervisor. I need to keep the following advice in my thoughts!

I just joined an appraiser forum today and was accepted into the group. I hope that I can learn from others in this group and make some new contacts with other appraisers.

Have a great weekend!

Doug

]]> http://dougcasady.com/so-close-but-yet-so-far/ Sun, 25 Feb 2018 16:01:09 +0000 http://dougcasady.com/?p=1273 Continue reading →]]> Hello,

Life is challenging at times and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

On September 8th, 2017 I  attended the Appraiser Qualifications Board public forum that was held in Minneapolis, MN. This was a public meeting that was held to encourage feedback and discussions regarding the new draft proposals that included reducing the number of experience hours for trainee appraisers. The proposal was to reduce the required hours for the first level of licensure from 2,000 hours to 1,000 hours. I decided it was worth my time and effort to attend the meeting and share my experience with the board members of the AQB at the public forum.

After the meeting in Minneapolis, the AQB  opened their website for written responses to the Fourth Exposure Draft proposal to the public.  There were only 170 written responses to this exposure draft. Five of the responses were from one appraiser who was in strong opposition to any changes being made. I was the 37th person to respond and plead my case one more time. Click here to view my response.

On February 1, 2018, The Appraiser Qualifications Board held another meeting to announce their decision regarding the proposed changes to the fourth exposure draft. I was so grateful that the AQB decided to stream the public meeting live. This was awesome and it saved me from making a trip from California to Washington D.C. to attend the meeting!  I was so happy to hear the announcement at the close of the meeting that they were going to put into effect as of May 1, 2018, the reduction of experience hours for the Residential Licensed Appraiser from 2,000 hours to 1,000 hours and for Certified Residential Appraiser from 2,500 hours to 1,500 hours!  I’ve waited for over 4 years for this change to happen!

I recently contacted BREA which is the governing body in the State of California to see if they had plans to adopt the new minimum requirements that had been announced. I was informed that BREA has decided to adopt the changes regarding lowering the college degree education requirement on May 1st, (which was another part of the proposal draft) however, they are not going to accept the reduction of the experience hours at this time! I was frustrated to hear this response, as I was hoping to have 1,500 hours by June and apply for my Certified Residential license. As it turns out, I will need to wait and see when and if BREA decides to adopt the new minimum experience requirements.

The positive side to this is that I am even more determined to succeed! This is why I have decided to revamp the old website that I built and use it as a platform to reach out to any Certified Residential or Certified General Appraiser in Southern California that would be willing to bring me on as a trainee so that I can continue to reach my ultimate goal by the end of 2018 in spite of this latest challenge.

Thanks for reading my post,

Doug

951-723-0087

e-mail:  doug@dougcasady.com

Orange, CA. 92867