Will TAF’s Proposed Criteria for Personal Property Appraisers Have Teeth?
(By Dave Maloney Sep 1, 2012) The Appraiser Qualifications Board (AQB) of The Appraisal Foundation (TAF) recently released a proposed new version (click here to view) of its Qualifications Criteria for Personal Property Appraisers. A colleague recently posited that: “Even though the proposed standards are voluntary, those of us belonging to an association will be impacted by the acceptance of the standards by the association.”
My reply was that I felt that the issue is more complicated than that.
I was a member of the TAFAC “criteria” committee back in 1998 when we first adopted the minimum qualification criteria for the personal property appraiser. As of this writing (September, 2012) those current criteria (click here to view) are in force and will remain so until the new criteria are adopted which might be in two or more years.
Those 1998 criteria are clearly voluntary for all appraisers, regardless of their societal affiliation. They criteria states so, to wit: “The AQB envisions that the [1998] Personal Property Appraiser Minimum Qualification Criteria will be used by major clients of personal property appraisers such as corporations and government agencies. It is important to note that this document sets out minimum criteria with which personal property appraisers may voluntarily wish to comply. The AQB does not foresee any governmental body utilizing these guidelines as part of a regulatory program.”
A few years ago I queried all societies and was surprised to learn that no society at all had or now has an established system for maintaining a registry of their members who meet the 1998 criteria. What is more, the 1998 criteria requires a comprehensive exam. Again, no society offers a comprehensive exam required for members wishing to voluntarily qualify. In short, to my knowledge, no society has systems in place to facilitate their members complying with the existing (1998) criteria. It would seem that the 1998 criteria has failed completely in its stated goal as noted above.
But the optional compliance requirement, for some, is now going to change. The criteria now being proposed are no longer voluntary for all appraisers.
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