The firm’s senior vice president of business development sits down with MPA to discuss his blueprint for success
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A change in regulations and an aging workforce have beset the mortgage industry with a shortage of appraisers. But mortgage servicing firm Appraisal Nation has seen strong growth over the past several years as it employs technology to address these challenges. More than 6,000 brokers now use the firm’s offerings every month.
The firm has been recognized as one of the country’s top appraisal management companies (AMCs). John Tedesco, Appraisal Nation’s senior vice president of business development, said the firm has seen 450% revenue growth this year, and has been cited by Inc. 5000 as the fastest growing AMC in America over the last two years.
Tedesco sat down with MPA to discuss how his firm has been beating the status quo.
MPA: What factors led to the shortage of appraisers?
John Tedesco: The shortage is really more about the appraisers themselves. They are sort of ageing out of the industry and the changing requirements to become an appraiser [such as requiring a bachelor’s degree], making it harder to get into the industry.
[Y]ou’re seeing a big shrinkage at the bottom entry point of the pool. At the top of the scale, we have appraisers retire each year. Some are aging out, passing away, retiring. In the last 10 years we’ve seen the average age of an appraiser go from early fifties to mid-sixties. Nationwide, the pool is shrinking. And demand is increasing in different markets, and we see millennials coming into the marketplace and now starting to buy and move into that generational influx. There’s a demand, but there’s no appraisers to do their reports.
MPA: Appraisal Nation doesn’t seem to be much affected by this shortage, and has actually grown over the years. What led to some of your successes?
JT: We have what’s called AVMs, or Automated Value Models. They are pulling complicated algorithms of multiple sales and tax products on a computer program, an appraiser, instead of having to go out to the house can look at that property – and that takes couple of hours, and then doing the formal report that takes a couple of hours – you can look at that AVM value model and put together the data in 5 to 10 minutes. … Now an appraiser can do four or five those in an hour versus maybe two appraisals in a day.
MPA: You’ve mentioned using drones and 3D Matterport cameras to make your workflow more efficient. How does that work?
JT: They do a 3D rendering of the room in real time. … So we can actually send an inspector out with the Matterport cameras and one of the drone inspectors with the aerial cameras on the outside to see the neighborhood – they can build the appraisal off of that. Those are little more expensive today than a traditional appraisal, and they are finding more of a need for that in different types of properties as opposed to traditional single-family home. But … I think we are going to see more of that in the future.
Related stories:
Appraiser, owner home-value opinion gap shrinks for 5th straight month
Dual US-Irish citizen extradited from Ireland over mortgage fraud charges
The firm has been recognized as one of the country’s top appraisal management companies (AMCs). John Tedesco, Appraisal Nation’s senior vice president of business development, said the firm has seen 450% revenue growth this year, and has been cited by Inc. 5000 as the fastest growing AMC in America over the last two years.
Tedesco sat down with MPA to discuss how his firm has been beating the status quo.
MPA: What factors led to the shortage of appraisers?
John Tedesco: The shortage is really more about the appraisers themselves. They are sort of ageing out of the industry and the changing requirements to become an appraiser [such as requiring a bachelor’s degree], making it harder to get into the industry.
[Y]ou’re seeing a big shrinkage at the bottom entry point of the pool. At the top of the scale, we have appraisers retire each year. Some are aging out, passing away, retiring. In the last 10 years we’ve seen the average age of an appraiser go from early fifties to mid-sixties. Nationwide, the pool is shrinking. And demand is increasing in different markets, and we see millennials coming into the marketplace and now starting to buy and move into that generational influx. There’s a demand, but there’s no appraisers to do their reports.
MPA: Appraisal Nation doesn’t seem to be much affected by this shortage, and has actually grown over the years. What led to some of your successes?
JT: We have what’s called AVMs, or Automated Value Models. They are pulling complicated algorithms of multiple sales and tax products on a computer program, an appraiser, instead of having to go out to the house can look at that property – and that takes couple of hours, and then doing the formal report that takes a couple of hours – you can look at that AVM value model and put together the data in 5 to 10 minutes. … Now an appraiser can do four or five those in an hour versus maybe two appraisals in a day.
MPA: You’ve mentioned using drones and 3D Matterport cameras to make your workflow more efficient. How does that work?
JT: They do a 3D rendering of the room in real time. … So we can actually send an inspector out with the Matterport cameras and one of the drone inspectors with the aerial cameras on the outside to see the neighborhood – they can build the appraisal off of that. Those are little more expensive today than a traditional appraisal, and they are finding more of a need for that in different types of properties as opposed to traditional single-family home. But … I think we are going to see more of that in the future.
Related stories:
Appraiser, owner home-value opinion gap shrinks for 5th straight month
Dual US-Irish citizen extradited from Ireland over mortgage fraud charges
