I Went Down to the Crossroads

“I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees

Asked the Lord above, ‘“Have mercy, save poor Bob if you please”’

Robert L. Johnson – Take two of Cross Roads Blues (11/27/36, Room 414, Gunter Hotel, San Antonio, TX)

Did that great bluesman, Robert Leroy Johnson (1911-1938), travel to the crossroads of Highways 61 and 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi? There, at midnight, so the legend goes, did he get down on his knees and sell his soul to the devil to become one of the greatest blues guitar players of all time? Johnson himself never told this story. Other bluesmen in whiskey-fueled, reverent, envious whispers, related this story about him to anyone who’d buy them a drink and listen to the tale.  

What is relevant to us here and now about this dark morality tale? What can we glean from it?

Johnson, at about 16, started playing (terribly) an old, tuneless guitar at local jook joints, roadhouses, taverns, and street corners. According to many blues musicians of the day, he was so atrocious in every possible musical sense that he was literally thrown out of jook joints when he tried to play.  

At 19 years old, he disappeared from the jook joint circuit. But when he came back, he was better than the blues guitar legends of the day.  Did he sell his soul in exchange for that virtuosity? In actuality, he lived with the family of Ike Zimmerman, a local blues and gospel musician. Ike’s guitar and harmonica playing prowess was well known throughout the Mississippi delta and he was known to take live-in students.  

While with the Zimmermans, Johnson changed. He practiced his guitar, practiced singing, practiced phrasing, experimented with chords, progressions, intonations, slides, and tuning. Much practice was around midnight, (since Ike was a working man, he had a day job), and in graveyards, which tended to be near a cross roads. Johnson combined what he practiced into sounds and rhythms no one had heard before.  

Johnson’s story contains the concept of consideration – that of giving something up in order to receive in return something of equal or greater value, inherent in which is the concept of change. This is also known as a sacrifice. Johnson, under Ike’s tutelage, simply made the sacrifices necessary for his fame and accolades. In short, Johnson changed.

Is real estate appraisal, with the issue of more detailed time adjustments, at another cross roads now? In the past, appraisers simply smoothed changes in sales prices over time by  measuring prices as of January 1st, then again as of December 31st. If they went up an average of six percent (6%) annually, then the appraiser made a one-half percent adjustment each month. This protocol inflates prices at six percent (6%) per year, true. But it does not reflect the fact that for the first three quarters of the year prices may have increased at twelve percent (12%) per year, then in the last quarter went flat with a zero percent (0%) price change.  

In this example, consider that a comparable sale going under contract at the beginning of the fourth quarter of the year would merit no time adjustment whatsoever. Nevertheless, the appraiser using the smoothing technique will adjust that sale upward at one-half percent per month over a time span when the market is actually flat. That appraiser is merely filling forms, not appraising.  How so? 

When an appraiser derives a value conclusion via this (or any other) faulty protocol, that conclusion lacks credibility. Further, to report a value conclusion whose base is in an erroneous protocol, is to mislead the client. Is that the goal of a competent appraiser? 

Time to sum up. After all of this, what is relevant to us here and now with the morality tale about Robert L. Johnson? We glean that appraisers  are at a cross roads. Appraisers will make the sacrifices necessary to measure and report time adjustments accurately, or the GSEs will continue to downgrade the importance of the appraiser. Appraisers and appraisal will change or die.

Mr. Johnson went down to numerous cross roads, sat on many gravestones, in many cemeteries, well past many midnights. In other words, he sacrificed time to become great, the only real wealth any of us actually has. And in that sacrifice, he changed.

Please understand, this essay is not to advocate that appraisers change back to legal pads, 300’ fiberglass tape measures, pencils, and Kodak© cameras. If there is an app that will help appraisers to be more efficient, credible, accurate, reliable, and reproducible, it is wise to adapt and master such apps. The magic of the app is actually in the appraiser’s understanding of what the app does, how it accomplishes that end, and why the app’s output is relevant to the answer to the client’s appraisal question(s). No force on (or under) the planet can force expertise and competency on an appraiser. Only the appraiser can choose to change.

A competent appraiser will  use apps to become more efficient. Johnson did not receive his power as a guitarist and grace as a musician. He sacrificed his time to earn that power and grace. He traded his time with Ike Zimmerman to learn the musicology (the science) of the blues guitar. He took time alone in those cemeteries to master the art of playing the blues guitar. He sacrificed time to practice, learn, then practice some more to learn some more. He chose to change. Why should we appraisers be any different?

(And just as an end note: If you think there is some kind of magic to learning the science and art of real estate appraisal, yes it is getting warmer where you are and, yes, that is the smell of brimstone.)