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Review of The Appraisal Writing Handbook
by Alan Blankenship. Appraisal Institute Paperback (December 1997).
Published in the July, 1998 issue of Appraisal
Today. Reviewed by Ann O'Rourke. Copyrighted. For reprint permission Contact Us.
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All appraisers are writers. Our primary products are written reports. But few of us have training in professional writing. Residential appraisers can often get by with using mostly canned phrases in reports with some "original" writing, but commercial appraisers are required to do a significant amount of narrative writing.
Alan Blankenship, PhD, is a regular speaker at appraisal events and teaches writing seminars to appraisers. The Appraisal Institute
published The Appraisal Writing Handbook, written by Blankenship.
The first two sentences in the handbook are: "Few people choose to become appraisers because it provides opportunity to write lengthy, detailed reports on a regular, sometimes daily, basis. Nevertheless, almost no group of professionals, except lawyers, is required to write more than
appraisers." All too often, we produce "one size fits all" reports filled with boilerplate. Blankenship emphasizes matching your writing to the audience. "The value of any communication depends solely on the response it produces in the reader...Using the same reporting style for all occasions will guarantee poor communication, an ineffective report, and probably an unhappy client."
Visual appeal
The author starts with the basics of layout and design, such as using serif type rather than sans serif, and ragged right, for easier reading. Labeling and numbering exhibits, keeping them in the body of the report, not the addenda, and where to place tables and graphs for most emphasis are discussed.
The handbook uses appraisal-related illustrations and
examples.
Writing persuasively
In your appraisal reports, you are trying to convey your opinions and persuade the reader to agree with you. Use verbs to give more punch to your reports. Some examples:- "suggest" not "it is our suggestion"- "need" not "in need of"- "indicate" not "is an indication
of"
Proofread carefully
Typos and errors such as wrong addresses and misspelled words are a problem in most appraisal offices. How many times have you done a review, seen a misspelled word or wrong address and looked much more critically at the report?
Completely unacceptable are mistakes such as different values in different sections of the report and boilerplate from the wrong city. Spelling the client's name wrong is a bad
mistake!
I vs. We and other style issues
Use of a concise, direct writing style is advocated in the handbook. Two examples are below. In this newsletter, I started using I instead of the editorial "we" last year, after 5 years of "we." Does it read better and make it more direct? The same applies to appraisal reports.
Use the active voice. "I inspected the property" vs. "The property was inspected by me." What about residential form reports? Although most of us think of commercial appraisers as writers, residential appraisers also write. Because much less writing is included in a residential form report, each sentence is important. If the report is for mortgage lending, the borrower usually receives a copy of the report.
Avoiding appraiser jargon and legal-ese is important. The use of abbreviations such as GLA will leave the reader puzzled. Be careful with boilerplate (templates).
Should you buy this handbook?
This is the only writing handbook I know of specifically for appraisers. I have writing handbooks on my bookshelf, but they have too much material to wade through, so I don't use them much.
As compared with other writing books for general audiences the 53-page handbook seems expensive. To me, the relatively short length of the handbook made it easier to read. The handbook spoke to me, as an appraiser.
Since there is no index, the short length makes it easier to find what you're looking for. If you get one good idea from the handbook, such as a new way to format your reports to make them easier to read, or a grammatical error you have been making which may annoy a client, it is worth the money.
I have heard Alan Blankenship speak several times. I took notes, but usually misplaced them. Now I have a handbook to use as a reference.
Since I have read the handbook, I really notice the use of the passive voice in my appraisals. Time to
change! |
