Appraiser completes move to new location

Pam Long Appraisal Services recently completed its move to a new location just outside Nixa, on the same property that houses Long’s home and family-run farm.
For Pam Long, the move is a homecoming of sorts, as the land that houses the home, business and farm is the same farmland where she lived as a child.
“We can farm, we can live and work all in the same spot now, and we were going three places every day,” she said. “We raise miniature horses and donkeys here, for our grandkids.”
Also on the property is an airplane hangar and runway, which is useful for her husband Randy Long’s photography work through Longshot Images, a division of Pam Long Appraisal Services.
Longshot Images provides virtual-tour photography for Realtor.com, something the company has done since 1997, the same year Pam Long Appraisal Services was founded.
After one of her clients in the banking industry gave Long a referral for the photography, she applied for and got the job shooting virtual tours of area properties for Realtor.com. Travel for most photo shoots is by car, she said, but after Randy Long got his pilot’s license in 2000, the company got a plane, which can help trim travel time. Randy Long also does aerial photos for special clients and friends. His work can be seen on the Web at www.long
shotimages.com.
Long said she started her business in 1997, following several years of working for another appraisal company, Don Ihrig Co., which is no longer in business. Growth was almost immediate, she said.
“After two months, I talked my sister, whose little boy was going to start kindergarten … into coming to help me, because I was already getting busy,” Long said. Her sister, Anne Corby, is still with the company, working as a staff appraiser.
The first year, the company did 167 appraisals. The second year, it did about 1,000, followed by about 1,500 the next year. For about the last three years, the number has been steady, at about 2,000 appraisals a year, she said. Long declined to provide company revenues.
While she’d like to continue to grow the company, Long said for the past few years, she’s been doing as much business as she can handle.
“It all has to funnel through me. I still insist on looking at every appraisal that goes out of here,” she said.
Long said her company, which focuses on residential appraisals, does many appraisals for new homes built by local builders. Most of her clients are banks, she said.
Realtor Doug Garges of Carol Jones Realtors said he’s worked with Long on properties for several of the builders he represents, including J&L Building, Triple S. Properties, TC Builders and Elegant Homes.
“She does the pre-construction appraisals,” Garges said. “When we build a new house, we’ve got to get a construction appraisal before the builder starts the house.”
She also does end-loan appraisals for mortgage companies before the houses are purchased.
“For the people who buy the house, when they get their 30-year mortgage on it, she goes out and certifies (that) the house has been built according to what the builder said he was going to build,” Garges said.
The reason Garges has continued to work with Long and her company is simple: “It’s just great service. She’s really good and she’s about the fastest we’ve ever dealt with,” he said.
Long said she’s glad to be settled into her new space, and she added that the location of her business isn’t as essential to clients as it used to be.
“Now, with e-mail, we hardly ever hand-deliver the product anymore,” she said.
In the beginning, Long operated her company from home. But while waiting for the new location to be move-in ready, she leased space in the Empire Bank building at the intersection of highways 160 and CC in Nixa.
Now, the home-based business occupies about 1,500 square feet, with storage. It is housed above the garage, and separated from the home’s living area.
In addition to her husband and sister, Long works with five certified appraisers and two secretaries. She said the company does between 150 and 200 appraisals a month.
Long said she recently entered a subcontracting relationship with a commercial appraiser, whom she declined to name, and the company will soon begin offering commercial appraisals.