Polish Valuation Standards To Go Global
A full house of 150 property professionals attending a Valuation Conference at the Radisson SAS Hotel, Warsaw last month, listened to experts from the USA, UK and Poland talk about the globalisation of valuation practice and the need to follow a uniform set of International Valuation Standards.
The conference hosted jointly by The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and The Polish Federation of Valuers' Associations (PFVA) was sponsored and organised by Polish Properties.
Professor Andrzej Hopfer, PFVA President, set the scene by describing the "good health" of the Polish valuation profession and its commitment to adjust to the needs of a changing business world.
Stephen Williams, RICS President followed with a presentation on "World Financial Stability Through Valuation Competence". The RICS President, a practising appraiser in the USA, addressed the need for the valuation profession, under pressure from accountants, financial advisers, and regulatory agencies, to redouble its efforts at gaining respect for its competence and ethics. In his view "despite the profession's ongoing efforts at harmonizing standards throughout major markets in the developed world, valuation is still perceived as a fragmented profession - it has been called a cottage industry - in the world's business communities" He called for the valuation profession to urgently come together across national boundaries whilst adding that "a prerequisite is for national and international valuation groups to agree standards that emphasize respected and tested competence and ethics"
Chris Thorne, Director of Atis Real, and leading authority on international valuation standards, emphasized the importance of a single definition of market value and pointed to refinements in the new edition of International Valuation Standards published last year by the International Valuation Standards Committee (IVSC).
The participants were also afforded the rare opportunity of listening to the most eminent valuation academics from the UK and Poland in a single day. They included Professor David Mackmin of Sheffield Hallam University, Paul Royston of Nottingham Trent University, Professor Stanislawa Kalus from the University of Silesia and Professor Ewa Kucharska Stasiak from the University of Lodz.
Sitting on specialist panels chaired by Jerzy Filipiak and Jerzy Adamiczka, Vice Presidents of PFVA, Karen Williams from North Carolina, impressed the audience with a presentation on the efficiencies of valuation reporting American style and Matthew Martin an arbitration expert from the UK tackled the thorny issue of valuation disputes.
Proposals to amend the existing Polish Valuation Standards (Green Book) in line with International Valuation Standards were presented by Zdzislaw Malecki, Chairman of the Valuation Standard Committee, PFVA.
A client's view also, of the quality of the valuation reporting was presented by Agnieszka Jachowicz, Investment Director, Arka BZ WBK Real Estate Market Fund.
Conference moderator, Chris Grzesik, Chairman of RICS Europe and Managing Director of Polish Properties summed up the conference as follows:
"For the second year running the RICS and PFVA have succeeded in hosting a world class valuation conference in Warsaw with an array of internationally renowned speakers. All have emphasised the need for valuers worldwide to harmonise standards and practice in the interests of transparency in a global real estate market.
However delegates could not have failed to be impressed by the steps being taken by the Polish valuation profession to do just that, putting Poland at the forefront of EU countries seeking to fall in line with international standards".