Ozarks Profile: Steve Jackson

Tell us about your company.

It was founded in 1967 by my grandfather, Bob Harrison. He was one of the first commercial real estate appraisers in the Springfield area. (Realty Mortgage & Appraisals has) only three employees. What we do is commercial real estate appraisal commercial, industrial, multifamily we do very limited residential work. We do appraisals for estate purposes, and right-of-way acquisitions,working for municipalities.

Are you also a mortgage lender?

No. When my grandfather incorporated back in 1967, he was actually coming from Dallas (and) a career as a mortgage banker, and decided to pursue the appraisal industry as well, but he was still brokering some mortgages, and so that's why mortgage is in the corporate name. I never have changed it.

How did you end up as president of the company?

It was a small family company. I grew up in Springfield, and the summer before my senior year at Glendale, I started running errands and helping the other appraisers in the field (to) measure buildings, looking up records at the courthouse. It started as a summer job. I was all set to go to school at Mizzou and my grandmother asked me if I would consider staying in town and going to school at Drury so I could continue to kind of see if I liked this profession. I liked it. I stayed and started doing what I do now full-time in 1982.

What are some things that affect property values?

One thing, and it's not affecting the commercial industry as much, but one of the big red flags is the issue of black mold in structures where there's been water damage that isn't visible and damage is in the walls and it's become a health issue. One of the main things affecting value in Springfield right now (that) I see is the scarcity of land. In my opinion, we're literally running out of good, prime development pieces of land inside the city limits. It's driving costs up. It's driving site values up, and if you couple that with increasing materials costs, it's really pushing the cost to do new projects up.

How has the industry changed?

We're still doing the same thing that we did 20 years ago determining market value of a property. Technology has helped as far as creating databases to store information. Everything we do is based on market information, and before, we'd have numerous notebooks by category . Now it's all accessed by building a database, and everything's basically at your fingertips.

How much will a rise in interest rates affect your business?

It'll have some effect. The thing is, rates are so low right now that I think we can stand some upward movement with rates, and projects are still going to be financially feasible.

Tell us about your family.

My wife's name is Brenda. We've been married 19 years Aug. 10. I have two sons. Austin will be a sophomore at Glendale and Dylan will be a seventh grader at Pershing.

Any hope the boys will follow you into the business?

I'm going to wait and see, because I was never pushed into it. I was nudged by my grandmother, but I sure have no regrets. It's been wonderful. I've met a ton of people. I've still got relationships with men that were my grandfather's clients which is kind of neat. (My grandfather) was still coming to work every day (when) he passed away in 1990 (at) 81 years old.