My husband and I got into the car the other day and I began searching for a pen to jot something down. I finally came across a few promotional pens and actually stopped and read it. I guess it’s one of those scientific laws (although, clearly not completely proven) like losing socks in the dryer. We lose socks in the dryer and we collect pens from businesses we have no recollection of ever patronizing.

Well, except for that one time in search of detoxification we ended up with a pretty funny pen from Colon Blow. Oh, the looks on people’s faces when they used that pen!

I can’t recall the name of the business on the pen I was using the other day but I do remember that it was swirly blue and green on the outside with a cute chrome-like accent. Also, that it was from out of state… but in this day and age of internet shopping it doesn’t seem strange to have a pen from a business out of state.

I’ve never ordered promotional pens. T-shirts, sure, but not pens. I don’t really see it as being necessary for our appraisal business since legislation is still in effect that prevents us from talking to our clients, let alone handing them a customized Bic Clic stic. Don’t get me started… oh, please don’t get me started.

But, just in case you are interested, which I highly doubt you are, right now appraisals have to be ordered through an AMC (Appraisal Management Company) a company with possibly no appraisal experience, they charge a heft fee (sometimes close to $400 or more) for “arranging” to have your property appraised. This means they take an order from a broker or other lending institution and they shuffle it to an appraiser who sometimes doesn’t even live or work in the area. That appraiser accepts a fee, usually much lower than the AMCs fee and doesn’t come out of the AMCs fee (regs state they must be billed separately) – to appraise a property where he/she might have zero knowledge of the market area.

This is to supposedly prevent appraisers from being pressured to hit certain values. What it has done is allow for shoddy, inaccurate appraisals because very few good appraisers will accept a fee that is 75% less than what they typically charge while the AMC collects a much larger fee – that’s assuming that they might get the order anyway. Worse yet! Now the AMCs are essentially double-dipping and CHARGING APPRAISERS up to $400.00 (more in some cases) just to be added to their roster of appraisers. Doesn’t guarantee them any work and in many cases appraisers have paid out the fee and months later have never received a single order.

Recently new legislation went into effect requiring AMCs to pay “usual and customary” fees to appraisers. They are currently fighting this tooth and toenail and right now have delayed the onset of this new reg by several months. Why? Clearly someone is going to start having a problem with paying an appraiser a decent fee (since he’s the one doing all the work) while paying an AMC the same fee or higher just shuffle some orders. – ending up with an appraisal that costs twice as much as what it used to.

Okay, okay, stepping off my soapbox now. It is what it is and for the time being there isn’t much that can be done about it, suffice it to say I’ll put that order for GOPromos notepads on hold for a while.