In August 2002, my wife Wendy and I started Gurley Residential Appraisal Services, LLC - www.WendyGurley.com .  She has been an appraiser for about 15 years.  I came on full-time in 2003 and been licensed for about 4 years.  As a husband and wife team, I do more of the research and inspections and she does the reports.  It works out good like that.  I recently started a blog called www.AppraisalHomeBiz.com   At that site, you can get a copy of a short, free ebook on getting into the appraisal business if you're interested.

When we started the business, we mostly worked with real estate investors.  As time went on we began doing more for buyers or sellers ranging from moderated sized homes to high end.  With the tax assessors situation in New Orleans we began to get a good bit of work from home owners  who wished to  dispute their assessed value.  The same thing happened with the  Louisiana  Road Home  Program.  We had  tons of apppraisals for that and then did quite a few on the back end with disputes.  Lastly, it looks like we're entering the divorce market as well.  I said we weren't going to, but we've gotten a few recently and it worked out OK.