The “Cobra Effect”, Incorporation By Reference & The Appraisal Profession

Contributory Value with Mark “Skap” Skapinetz

In this episode, we caught up with appraiser and author Jeremy Bagott.

We expected to encounter a hard-edged industry reformer who would take us deep into some weed bed we didn’t want to be in. But by the end of the interview, we had the feeling that Bagott, to the extent anyone can truly know these things, was a regular guy. (This is true. I am a “regular guy.”)

His 2020 book, “Dispatches from the Cosmic Cobra Breeding Farm,” sounded a clarion call – a throwdown if you will. He exhorts appraisers to be like activist shareholders who own stock in a company that is found to be squandering precious capital on golden handshakes and corporate perks.

He paints the Appraisal Foundation and its tiny government patron, the Appraisal Subcommittee, as a decades-old meal ticket for a couple dozen bon-vivants who have created a lucrative fiefdom. He asks appraisers to see the Appraisal Foundation, a tiny 501(c)(3) nonprofit, as a Disney-like rights-management operation that has attached itself, along with its growing number of copyrighted products, to an entire profession. The organism then plows back some of its time and money into gaining further influence and further cementing its standing.

Bagott was getting back to work reviewing reports for a pipeline easement project when we caught up with him at his office in Ventura, California, a short drive from where he grew up in the San Fernando Valley, which he describes as “Levittown West.” As a kid, he daydreamed about being a game warden in Wyoming or piloting the Goodyear Blimp. As a teen, he had what he described as “problems adjusting,” got into trouble with the police and ended up joining the Marines.
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