The Broken Window Theory says a single broken window can lead to urban decay. It’s no big deal in and by itself. However, if it remains broken, it sends a signal that no one’s paying attention. Trash piles up. Graffiti shows up. Crime escalates.
People stop taking pride in the place. Before long, the neighborhood becomes worse, not because of one window, but because neglect starts to feel normal.
Chief appraisers live with broken windows every day. They just don’t call them that. A missed SLA here. An appraisal sitting unassigned for “just one more day.” A manual workaround that everyone knows is inefficient, but no one has time to fix. A spreadsheet that was supposed to be temporary… five years ago.
Fee appraisers have broken windows too. They’re the small shortcuts we get used to. Using old comps, ignoring obvious deferred maintenance, stale market overview, weak cap rate support. One time doesn’t matter much. But when it happens over and over, the work slowly gets weaker.
Individually, none of these feels catastrophic. Collectively, they quietly erode trust, performance and credibility.
In appraisal departments, broken windows don’t show up as loud failures. They show up as friction. Delays. Rework. Defensive explanations to credit. Extra review layers added “just in case.” What started as caution becomes drag. What started as prudence becomes inefficiency.
And here’s the part that matters most: the C-suite doesn’t see effort. They see outcomes.
They don’t see how hard your team worked to clear a backlog. They see cycle times creeping up. They don’t see the nuance of a complex review. They see exceptions, escalations and uncertainty.
Broken windows quietly downgrade the perceived value of the appraisal function from strategic risk partner to necessary cost center.
The best chief appraisers understand this instinctively. They fix fundamentals. Clean handoffs. Clear ownership. Enforced SLAs. Repeatable processes that work even when the best people are out of the room.
Operational discipline is not bureaucracy. It signals to lending and credit that appraisal risk is controlled. It signals to executives that decisions are being supported, not slowed. It signals that the department is engineered, not improvised.
When appraisal operations run clean, the conversation changes. You stop explaining delays and start contributing insight. You stop defending your process and start informing better decisions.
That’s what bringing real value to the bank looks like.
Real value comes from having the discipline to fix the first broken window and the right technology to ensure it stays fixed.
Let’s fix your window.