Bill Post: The chain of events roiling the RICS

Three RICS-related tales for the price of one to begin. The first is funny, the second is frustrating. The third may chill the bones of 16,000 RICS-registered valuers. Last year, a thief purloined the RICS presidential chain. The Met has failed to collar a suspect. Don’t laugh; the missing links are wrought from gold and worth a fortune. Examine the snap of Justin Sullivan at his inauguration as the 143rd president on 16 January. The 55-year-old, who runs the Adair QS consultancy, is bedecked with A chain, just not THE chain worn by predecessors. Sullivan’s reputation as an expert witness was mauled two weeks later. He had given “quantum” evidence in the celebrated case of the moth-infested mansion. “I was unimpressed by Mr Sullivan’s grasp of the matters in issue – and by his exercise of judgement,” barked Mr Justice Fancourt. Uproar. The new president removed his chain on 4 March and submitted himself to the judgement of the RICS Standards Board. A wider General Council meeting on 21 March resulted in 25 out of 26 thumbs being turned down. A letter from Peter Pereira Gray, former head of investments at the Wellcome Trust, had demanded Sullivan’s head. Sullivan’s spokesman ripostes, “respecting the integrity and independence of regulatory processes – even when politically difficult or unpopular with some factions – is part of good governance”. Story three also involves Pereira Gray, today chair of Urban & Civic. The most cerebral man in property produced a magisterial report in 2021 for the RICS, urging valuers to shift from taking sophisticated guesses based on yield data toward more numerically reliant Discounted Cash Flow models. Adding, as an afterthought, that AI-assisted valuations “might become ‘pre-eminent’”. The RICS has advocated DCF models for decades. Pereira Gray’s report is the second this century. Automatic valuation models have already minimised human input. But valuers are adamant human intelligence must be part of the calculus. Any idiot can feed numbers into an app. So how far can the human art of valuing a property be transformed into AI-powered science? Zoom in to Natalie Bayfield’s valuation teach-in on 10 April. The visiting fellow at Bayes Business School has ironed out a wrinkle in the maths that will make DCF models more accurate. Byfield has built a “fully explicit” model, which obviates the need to guess yields. Pereira Gray suggests valuers take notice. “I hope they will all engage constructively with Natalie’s work.’” He is asking nicely. Peter Bill is a former editor of Estates Gazette Image © Colin Miller