Panel volume at a split, or private work at full fee. I keep rebuilding the spreadsheet.

Running the numbers on next year's mix for a small valuation practice and the two paths don't compare cleanly, so I'll lay out both and let the room argue.

Panel work through management companies gives you a queue. You don't market, you don't chase invoices per file, and volume smooths out. What you give up is the split, so a $500 borrower-paid fee lands somewhere well under that in your pocket, and turn time pressure is somebody else's number, not yours. Chapter figures put single-family fees at roughly $300 to $600 before any split, and the AVM share of home equity work is already somewhere around 35 to 45 percent and heading past half. Panel volume is exactly the segment automation is eating first, because that's where the low-risk files live.

Private work, meaning tax appeals, estate and divorce files, litigation support, pays the whole fee and sometimes more, and an AVM cannot testify. The problem is it arrives in lumps, the sales cycle runs on attorneys and CPAs remembering you exist, and you can go six weeks with three orders.

So the question is whether the smooth-but-shrinking queue or the lumpy-but-defensible book is the better place to put a year of effort. I've been wrong about this before.