© Southeast Appraisal Resource Associates, Inc. 2019
MANDATORY CROSS-DISCIPLINE EDUCATION
Southeast Appraisal
Now we have USPAP training mandatory every two and five years. Let’s also make cross-discipline
education mandatory. This should apply to the commercial / industrial disciplines of business
valuation, intangibles, real property, machinery and technical services, and inventory. Waive the
requirement for personal property, marine survey, and residential real property.
Why waive for the latter group? Answer, because they rarely are involved in cross-discipline matters
that affect business and government issues (yes, I know of current mortgage issues but not
discussing residential matters here).
So what is the problem? Why bother with cross-discipline training? Well, quite often the lead
appraiser in a cross-discipline assignment hires an appraiser of another discipline to do X. The lead
appraiser does not adequately understand the appraisal techniques of the contributing appraiser,
and/or does not understand how to properly interrelate the information from the two disciplines to
the appraisal problem. Even further, the engaged second appraiser cannot tell the lead appraiser
what levels of service and/or value concepts are applicable. Therefore, about the situation it may be
somewhat characterized as “the blind leading the blind”.
The cure is to require each appraiser, who wants to be designated or certified, to take multi-
discipline awareness classes in the other two primary designations, as well as an inter-relationship
class across disciplines and service applications. These disciplines are business valuation, real
property, and machinery and technical services.
And yes, these classes need to be designed. Perhaps the current ASA program for the Appraisal
Review and Management designation may suffice in this regard. We shall see. Make it mandatory.