In commercial lending you will find that all appraisers are equally qualified.  In the first place, a fee appraiser is an appraiser for hire by the general public, as opposed to a staff appraiser who works

directly for a commercial lender.  The general rule is that most commercial lenders will not accept an appraisal from a fee appraiser unless that particular fee appraiser is designated in advance by the commercial lender.  This commercial lending rule is to prevent any collusion between the borrower and the appraiser by bringing in an inflated value of the commercial property value in order for the borrower to get more cash from his/her commercial loan.

In commercial lending and residential lending there are certain professional designations that an appraiser can earn that will give him/her a more universal acceptance by both commercial lenders and residential lenders which, generally speaking, will give him/her more universal acceptance in the marketplace for his/her services.  Most of these “designations” are earned by a combination of both classroom instruction and actual work experience in the field that is supervised by qualified appraisers according to very strict standards established by various professional associations of appraisers.

There are three tiers of appraisers.  The lowest of the designations – The third tier, is called the Provisional Certified Appraiser.  A Provisional Certified Appraiser is one that has completed much but not all of the required education and experience.  An appraiser with this designation may appraise only single family dwellings and is not approved to work on commercial properties. The level of appraiser has only one year left to complete his mandatory training.

The second tier or next highest professional designation is called the Residential Certified Appraiser.  This tier (designation level) residences and some 2 to 4 unit buildings up to a certain value.

The first tier and the highest designation is called the General Certified Appraiser and an appraiser with this designation may appraise any type of property – including those properties that would be considered commercial properties and would require a commercial loan.

A commercial loan broker or lender should not collect fees for an appraisal on an income property until a formal proposal has been issued by a commercial lender and proposed to the borrower by the commercial broker or directly by the commercial lender. The fact is that appraisals for income properties are just too expensive to have redone if the lender refuses to accept the appraiser the borrower or the broker has selected.  In commercial lending the appraiser should collect his fee before doing the work in order to prevent disagreements about the value arrived by the appraiser.

In commercial lending it is both customary and proper to ask an appraiser for a copy of his CV (resume) and references.  All experienced appraisers have these already prepared and they will be happy to comply with such a request