USPAP and the NICK.  What does that mean?  Has a reviewer ever told you some part of your report was not right?  Gave you a hard time on it?  Told you to re-do something?  That’s the nick.  But there is help!  There are ways to avoid the nick in the future.  Read on!

When we talk about USPAP and the nick, for example, did that reviewer say your neighborhood analysis was just a collection of facts?  It really did not analyze the neighborhood?  From reviewers, that is a common comment, as well as one that is entirely avoidable, too!  Or, how about the nick from the reviewer that your reconciliation did not meet USPAP’s SR1-6?  That, too, is something you can avoid.

So, how do you avoid USPAP and the nick?  There is not much you can do to avoid USPAP.  That’s cast in granite, right?  But avoiding the nick is much easier.  And that’s exactly what we cover in the podcast – ways to avoid the nick.  This can be easier than you might think.  How?  Avoid meaningless statements such as, “…the subject is in a good neighborhood”.  Why?  OK, what’s a good neighborhood?  How did you measure that goodness objectively?  You avoid this problem by instead telling your client the three, four, or five reasons the market wants to purchase in the subject’s neighborhood.

You avoid USPAP and the nick, for example, by complying with USPAP to use logic and reasoning to explain why you did or did not do something as part of your appraisal. Again, you explain to your client why the market wants to purchase houses in the subject’s neighborhood.  You avoid merely telling the client that the market wants to buy in the subject’s neighborhood.  You avoid that nick when you communicate with your client, not merely tell the client something.