“I was locked in a bank vault in an empty building, with not a soul in sight. Panic set in. I did not have a cell phone with me and I tried yelling for help for about an hour with no results…”
The story gets better: To escape, the appraiser took off all but his skivvies, and after thirty minutes of prying the slats in the door, he finally slipped through—only to greet the owner on the other side. “Needless to say…the client never called again,” but the appraiser did get a good story out of the engagement.
This “Field Folly” appears in the current issue of The Communicator, the quarterly publication of FREA (Foundation of Real Estate Appraisers); www.communicatormagazine.com. More stories include the one about being mistaken for “the other woman;” and another about conducting a house appraisal—only to walk into a bedroom, and find more value than bargained-for. What's your best BV story “from the field”? Email the BVWire editor, and we may publish it here.