From a very small town where the majority is covered with tobacco fields, hails trainee, Kory Kendall. Danville, Virginia born and raised, Kory landed in Atlanta in 2021 and finds himself at D.S. Murphy about to celebrate 1 year as an appraiser.
Growing up, he had no neighbors – very quiet life, very peaceful – but he always wanted to leave his hometown town one day. His parents were also from Danville. His father was a blue-collar lumber company worker and Mom did odd jobs and stayed at home with her two sons. He played baseball in high school but had to quit to “chase women”, he joked. Baseball took up way too much of his time and he wanted to be a normal high school student. After high school, he attended Virginia Tech, only 2 hours away from his hometown. He originally went to school for business and ended up with a degree in Financial Planning. It felt like something he rushed into and did because his friends were doing it. It never felt like it suited him. He graduated in 2021 amidst the pandemic, still searching for the right fit with the whole world searching for purpose and control.
Sometime in college he had met his current girlfriend, Samantha. When the pandemic hit and the end of their college journey moved online, they moved to Seattle (where Samantha is from) for a year. Kory had to get back to VT to finish his degree in person, so he recalled an expeditious car journey with his dad cross-country in a hybrid sedan. “My dad, being a trucker at heart, insisted on being the driver and going 14 hours a day to get home quickly.” To this day, Kory’s father comments on the surprising amount of hay in Montana and along the route in general.
After graduation, Kory and Samantha moved to Atlanta for Sam to attend Emory for a Master’s in Public Health. They found a rental house in the Medlock Park neighborhood of Dectaur. Kory quickly realized that he wasn’t getting a lot of interest in his degree. His girlfriend’s cousin (Kate Merrihew) worked for D.S. Murphy and he truly fell into it. Jeffrey Guillaume was staying in Kate’s back house apartment while training with Grant and James and would come over for dinner in the evening. Kory and Jeffrey hit it off and ended up talking about the business and the appraiser’s day to day.
Kory immediately went to work to earn his registration and joined Team Washney on June 1, 2022. *He wanted to note that his material is ready to mail on that day so the team is soon to add another Certified Appraiser. Kory mentioned that he’s excited to have found appraisal because the career seems to be the fit he has been looking for.
I asked Kory the following questions…
Q: What made you want to be an appraiser?
A: It’s truly something that I fell into – other than just saying Jeffrey Guillaume and Kate. I saw it as a job where I could continue to educate my self every year. You have to keep up with the times to be a good appraiser.
Q: What would you like to do when you are no longer appraising?
A: Run around a farm with dogs.
Q: What the weirdest thing you have come across when inspecting/appraising?
A: Evidently the right of passage that is new construction and the “waste tub” – the tub where everyone working on the job uses the restroom. Luckily, I’ve come to find that it’s not super common. It was early in my training with Grant and it seemed that it was a casual occurrence.
Q: Something no one knows about you?
A: I had to flee Amsterdam when air travel shut down in March 2020. 1. Because Trump announced travel was about to shut down completely and 2. Global pandemic – Literally on our first day in Amsterdam we heard the travel announcement. Slept in the airport and had to ride back in a sardine can of a plane but luckily made it out before the borders were closed. We had friends who got stuck in Europe for weeks.
Q: What words of wisdom can you share with the team?
A: I think it’s really important not to compare yourself to others but to compare yourself to you. If you can look and see where you are in a progress standpoint and try not to backtrack – that is good for everyone.