I searched the words: support and prove in both USPAP and in The Appraisal of Real Estate”. Interestingly, the word prove is not found in either document in this context. The fuzzier word support is found throughout both. The word ‘support’ seems to support supporting your opinion.
How is the word “support” used in the context of making adjustments? I decided the dictionary would provide some support for how the word ‘support’ is used. The results are curious, perhaps troubling. Which comes first: the opinion, or the analysis? Do you support your opinion, or do you come to a result from doing your analysis?
As a verb, the meanings of ‘support’ include:
- suggest the truth of; corroborate; “the studies support our findings”;
- to promote the interests or cause of;
- to uphold or defend as valid or right;
- Synonyms: substantiate back up · give force to · give weight to · bear out
- to hold up or serve as a foundation or prop
- To keep from weakening or failing; give confidence or comfort to
As a noun:
- A thing that bears the weight of something or keeps it upright.
- The act of supporting.
What strikes me is that support seems to come after the estimate or conclusion or opinion or findings.
So, what is the meaning of support in USPAP? It’s not in the Definitions. The first use of the word is in the USPAP Preamble, and it seems clear:
“An appraiser must maintain the data, information and analysis necessary to support his or her opinions…”
If we look at our dictionary meanings, what we are to do is: corroborate, promote, defend, substantiate, prop, and give confidence to our opinion.
The next appearance is in the definition of the word “credible: worthy of belief.” Believable results require support. The emphasis is on believability. Believability is an unmeasurable, subjective term.
Here is where it gets sticky . . . The word, “prove”.
“demonstrate the truth or existence of (something) by evidence or argument.”
So, when someone claims to be able to prove an adjustment, they claim to have the truth. A worse claim (in my opinion) is to sell someone that they have the miraculous elixir formula or software that can magically determine an adjustment.
So long as we have people out there selling us things – claiming they can teach us to ‘determine’ an adjustment – to ‘prove’ an adjustment – to magically calculate the truth – we will not be able to go forward as a profession. Our outlandish claims will come back to bite us.
We must concede to our innermost selves: What we do is subject to uncertainty. Any science, every profession, must know that absolute single-point answers are a form of fiction. There is a probability distribution. A range. A degree of variation. A level of uncertainty. Until the profession begins to address the issue of uncertainty, it will continue to decline. Uncertainty is risk. Our clients only care about risk or return. We must begin also – to care about the measurable reliability of our own work.
Our organizations must give it priority. Our regulators must understand its relevance. Our educators must teach it. It can be as simple as providing a subjective opinion of uncertainty. It can be more.
December 5, 2018 @ 7:56 am
Support: underpin your assertion with credible evidence?
December 5, 2018 @ 8:18 pm
George, for several decades I have been giving clients that want a point value, the range that applies like +-5% or +-10%.
For some clients who want the report to start negotiations to acquire a property, I give them ghree values within the range, the low, mean and high within the 1st sdtandard deviation.
So, they might make an offer at the low end of the range but be willing to go to the high end if they have too.
My range is dictated by how strong the market is, or weak, the quality of the data in terms of how conforming the dataset is, how the subject fits the data, etc.
While I do not do form reorts any more and have not since the UAD cam out, when I write a narrative for a lender, I give them the point value with +-5%, etc.
If one is doing form reports, maybe they just need to put the range into the comments. and then state how sure they are of their concluded value. When I say+-5%, I am saying that I am 90% sure that the value is within that range.
This brings context to the point value estimate. Clients seem to like it.
November 18, 2020 @ 4:12 am
As usual, George, well done, provocative, and to-the-point. Would that more appraisers had the stones to speak to power this clearly!
December 7, 2020 @ 11:41 am
George,
Thanks for going to the beating heart of what is an addiction on the part of this craft with babbel. I certainly am not privy to the conversations that brought the words “credible”, “prove”, or “support” into appraisal standards but I have been told the concern was with appraisers who simply rely on their own or someone else’s imagination.
Back when I was in USPAP instructor class I asked, “Who decides what is credible?” Answer, “The client.” So much for the survival of meaningful independence, support, or proof. Do as Steve Smith says and give ’em what they like and it will, voila, be credible, which implies proof and support. Right?
Actually, I have decided to take the client’s judgment about credibility privately with a grain of salt and teach those appraisers who want to learn that all of those words you mention refer to the diligence an appraiser exercises in research and analysis, their ability to reason in synthesis, and then, of course, their ability to communicate what they believe the answer is to whatever the problem was and why. So far the number of appraisers who want to even hear this is not overwhelming and why should it be?
Merit in our craft is not rewarded with payment, but then we’ve never defined quality in appraising notwithstanding every review appraiser somehow knows it when he or she sees it.
I’m getting dangerously close to defining a fact and that is not acceptable in this day of alternate realities. So here is our new standard; “if someone especially a client believes it, it is true, ergo credible.” And I think we got there long before 2016. RIP!