Early Years of Land Use Management and Development and Appraisal Review

Mr. Malin began his career in Massachusetts and New York City between 1976 and 1980 as a land investor, developer and project manager for the nation’s largest landowner, International Paper Company, (IPCO). He assembled properties on the resort island of Martha’s Vineyard and developed a tract of land in western Massachusetts.

He moved to NYC in 1978 and began his corporate career at IPCO where he worked for the land development arm and later became the land-use manager over their 3 million (plus) acres in New England. His focus was to find land whose highest and best use was greater than its timber value, this included land adjoining ski areas, lakefront tracts, and other uses that were ex-urban and in the path of development. He moved to Dallas with IPCO in 1980 and remained with them until 1983.

 During this time Mr Malin was charged with organizing multiple-property sales in over 20 states to the corporation’s real estate subsidiary. He ordered appraisals, surveys, and engineering in some cases. IPCO required him to review the appraisals and therefore, he began his career to pursue the MAI designation from the Appraisal Institute. This, he obtained in 1986.

Managing the Consulting and Appraisal Practice at a National Accounting Firm

 In 1986, just before the banking and savings and loan crisis in Texas, Mr. Malin joined the international accounting firm, Laventhol and Horwath (L&H) in the Dallas office and became the manager of the practice. It was one of 28 offices in the US and specialized in the hospitality industry and later he developed the bankruptcy valuation practice in Dallas. After securing the largest engagement of his career, for L&H to value all of the real estate assets of MBank, one of Texas top five banks at that time, including billions of dollars of real estate loans, he left to found a new full service real estate company with three partners. 

1989-1993 Managing a National, Valuation Practice and beginning the Litigation Support Services

 Mr. Malin and his partners formed a full-service real estate company at the time that the RTC became the government’s solution to the Texas real estate bust. He organized the consulting arm of Newmarket Southwest and due to his relationships forged in the accounting and appraisal world was asked to value some of the largest assets in the Bank of New England portfolio. These included hotels, skyscrapers, mixed use office/retail/hotel complexes, saltwater marinas, wineries with vineyards, regional malls and a variety of other uses. The practice took Mr. Malin and his team at Newmarket to 40 states valuing properties of all sorts including speedways, the entire Houston Galleria including hotel and offices, the clients were mostly banking and government entities.

During the early 1990’s, the RTC and lenders who had been the largest demand generators for appraisals, instituted new rules which drastically reduced fees.

The cost benefit of doing this type of engagement made it difficult to keep good staff appraisers. Mr Malin realized that to keep this practice, he would have to travel less and find other types of clients. He had been successful in the bankruptcy practice and was a good communicator and had many successful court appearances. He had testified in cases from California to Florida as well as north Texas successfully advocating his opinion. Juries and judges found his testimony credible.

 The Malin Group was Incorporated in Dallas in 1993

 In the summer of 1993, Mr. Malin and his partners agreed to sell their company, Newmarket, to Henry S. Miller Co. and Mr. Malin subsequently founded The Malin Group, Inc. to be a boutique real estate advisory and valuation firm specializing in real estate litigation support.

Among the firm’s many clients there are: an appraisal district north of Dallas in the path of growth; the largest wholesale water district providing water to most major cities to the north and east of Dallas; the city of Dallas; as well as landowners and condemnors in north Texas involved in the taking of property for public purposes.

Other types of engagements included determining damages from those diverting drainage onto neighboring properties and completing diminution in value (DIV) studies principally when insurance companies inadvertently omitted coverage for encumbrances in a title policy. One case with the city of Dallas in the mid-1990’s was for a rezoning of a certain use. This required studying the deleterious impact of this use on neighboring properties. It was contested in Federal court, appealed and re-tried three years later. In both instances the results favored Mr. Malin’s client.

The firm has had several international valuation assignments including millions of acres of Canadian timberland under a Crown Lease, twice valuing a private resort island in the Grenadines south of Barbados where the local government was challenging the taxable value as well as a boutique hotel on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica.

In the over 30 years since its founding the Malin Group, which included Joel Laviolette, MAI as well as Peter Malin, has had many diverse assignments. Among them, include 20 acres of developable land housing an FBO which had through-the-fence rights to an international airport, a corridor study for a north Texas city where a utility planned to take the land running in the median along its Main Street for an overhead transmission line , a 1,700-acre tract with over 100 million tons of frack sand cut off from its access to a rail spur and, 2,000 acres of structured wetlands, designed to cleanse and polish 90 million gallons a day of treated water for re-use.

The Malin Group-2023 and Beyond

Joel Laviolette, MAI is now semi-retired. Mr. Malin continues to consults with existing clients  in areas of their real estate litigation cases. He will continue to provide support, assisting in the valuation process and, in certain situations, he will offer to review the work of appraisers hired by those adverse to his client. If necessary, he can complete a review under USPAP and could provide a rebuttal.