They’ve been overhunted by blowhard politicians looking for someone to blame for the real estate bubble, ensnared in a morass of new federal “reforms” and squeezed by big banks looking to cover their own bottom lines.

Now those pesky guys and gals who arrive, clipboard in hand, to size up the value of your home are fast becoming the endangered species of the troubled real estate market.

The number of appraisers has plunged dramatically in Massachusetts over the past three years, falling to 2,871 this year from 4,048 in early 2007, the Massachusetts Board of Real Estate Appraisers reports.

And the exodus, in turn, threatens to heap more stress on an already reeling real estate market, leading to delays in closings of home sales and possibly even more serious trouble down the line.

“It’s been a real ugly couple of years,” said Steven Sousa, executive vice president of the Massachusetts Board of Real Estate Appraisers.

A Rude Awakening

And as it stands, it could get a lot uglier before it gets better.

Banks are getting a rude awakening when they try and order new appraisals. Faced with demands from lenders to turn around reports in 48 hours, increasingly overloaded appraisers are pushing back and telling lenders it could be nearly a week or more.

And those delays come atop an already tense situation for many homeowners, who often end up waiting only to find out the value of their home has sunk so low they can’t refinance or sell.

“We are in a market that is still in a state of flux,” Sousa said. “All too often consumers are complaining ‘I can’t refinance because the appraisals came in too low.’ The later that information arrives on the scene, the further down the process the consumer can be.”

Moreover, as Banker & Tradesman reported this spring, the field is graying rapidly – with no surge of eager young apprentices arriving to take the place of those who retire, or just tire out.

Trainees working their way up to full-fledged appraisers have just about vanished in just three years, Sousa notes.

Meanwhile, with the young blood nowhere to be found, the age of the field is growing by the day. Sousa said as many as half of all appraisers still in business in Massachusetts are now 50 and older.

The shortage can be blamed on a classic case of good government intentions gone haywire.

In the aftermath of the near global financial collapse in the fall of 2008, the appraisal industry was a big fat target for reformers in both Washington and in various state capitals looking to fix what had gone so disastrously wrong in the real estate market.

After all, hadn’t appraisers signed off on all those excessive home values that helped inflate the real estate bubble?

The result was a hapless series of new federal regulations, including the Home Valuation Code of Conduct, which turned the business and economics of appraising homes on its head.

From the distance of some dimly lit backroom in Washington, these so-called reforms must have seen eminently reasonable, even wise.

Only licensed, certified appraisers were to inspect homes. And the field itself, long subject to pressure from banks and brokers to hit the right numbers, was to be given a new measure of independence.

A new business was launched – appraisal management companies – that would operate independently of the banks and brokers.

Reform Redux

But what seems wise in some distant government conference room too often crumbles when it meets reality.

The requirement immediately took away key jobs from appraiser trainees – doing house inspections. This had helped free up a master, licensed appraiser to supervise two or three trainees, while helping the young apprentice earn his keep.

Without being able to rely on apprentices, the workload ballooned for veteran appraisers, even as it stripped away the economic incentive firms had for hiring young trainees.

“Time is money,” Sousa said. “If the certified appraiser has to go out and do the inspection, it doesn’t make much sense to bring the trainee along.”

Additionally, new AMCs have added a new layer of bureaucracy, taking their cut out of the pay of individual appraisers.

Still, there is a glimmer of hope on the appraisal horizon, though not without some concerns as well.

The newly-passed Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill includes a provision aimed at boosting the pay of appraisers. And the industry is looking at ways of healing itself, including scaling back the time period for apprenticeship to entice more newcomers into the field.

As it stands, a decades-long rule requires trainee appraisers to earn their 2,500 hours of credits over two years. But Sousa contends those credits could easily be earned over a single year, and enforcing a two-year vow of poverty for trainees seems a little nonsensical for a field worried about losing half its members to retirement in the next decade or so.

Of course, there is no guarantee the federal government’s bid to reform its own appraisal industry reforms won’t once again backfire with unexpected consequences. Faced with a rise in appraisers pay, banks and lenders may simply pass the extra costs on to consumers through higher closing costs on loans.

Let’s just hope these latest reforms work and won’t need more reforming themselves two years down the line. If so, homeowners in need of an appraisal could find themselves in for a longer wait than they ever could have imagined.