Keanna brings a bright spot to a grinding day.

Dear Family and Friends,
Its 9:25 and once again I'm pretty tired and a bit discouraged. Imagine what it would be like to have a business and then someone turned your phone line off, that is exactly what I am experiencing now. No business calls all day, one order so far for the week, one check has come in. This is the change that government has brought me personally, thanks so much!
I am hard pressed to think of anything that government does well for the individual. Appraisers are the victim at the present of a meddling attempt to solve a non existing problem and everyone who is buying a home, working as a loan officer, appraiser, title company is getting hit with the bad results. Yesterday I received a very nice email from a seller of a home. I inspected the home as a FHA appraiser, was able to have conversations with her about the many improvements she had done on the house, looked through her scrapbook of before and after photos and completed the appraisal with all the information she provided as background for the report. If this appraisal report had been ordered through a management company I would have been forbidden to even have a conversation with her about her property and I would not have been given enough time to do a fair job. She was thanking me for going the extra mile, for including so many extra photos and for searching until I found comparables that were really like her home. She listed the property for a higher price than others had been selling for but she did it because she had replaced nearly everything in the home creating a beautiful place to live in the process. It was nice to be thanked for doing a good job.
Last evening and this morning I worked on a rebuttal to a review that was done on a property in Newark. The review contained so many mistakes it was hard to know where to start. For example she took the entire city of Newark and found that values had dropped for the city 22.7%. Yet my report contained the data showing that for the specific market area surrounding the subject property the values had dropped 9%. She wanted to know why I had not commented on freeway traffic since there were freeways in the area. All she would have had to do was take a quick look at the enclosed map to discover the subject was not near the freeways and had no traffic noise. Her review had page after page of computer generated numbers with no meaning whatsoever. Her suggested comps were much further away from the subject than mine yet she called me on the carpet for using distant comps. I hope and pray that justice will be done and that the underwriter will take a second look at my report and the review and see who has the most reliable story to tell. So I spent 5 hours and can't charge one penny for the time spent since rebuttals are done for free.
I honestly do not know what the future homes but tonight things seem bleak, nearly hopeless. Sorry to be that blunt but I think that's where I am at right now. Tomorrow afternoon I'll drive to Tracy to inspect a property for a construction loan. I'll only get to charge $50 for two hours work and so far they have not paid me for the 4 prior times I've been there.
Tomorrow I'll get a change of pace. I'm going to take care of Kallie at 9:30 so Steve can mow lawns. Keanna will be at her tumbling camp session so it will just be kallie and me. I love to watch her in action and then at 10:30 or so she will go down for her nap and I'll have some time to work. What a total blessing the kidos are. I got to see Timothy on Sunday evening, this afternoon I picked up Keanna from tumbling camp and then we visited McDonalds for some early dinner before I returned her to her mother. She was tired from the long days activities. What a sweet heart.
Well at this point I'm giving up on this day. I need to do groceries but I really hate to spend the money with a house payment looming in the next week. How tiring it gets to live at the edge all the time.
love to all,

Tim