A wider reach

On a spring day in 2011, a mysterious email popped into Richard Armalavage's inbox.

The message was from Stephen Bullock, a Boston appraiser he had never met. Armalavage says he's gotten his share of business pitches over the decades he's been in business in Naples, but they'd never amounted to much.

Still, Bullock had an intriguing proposal: To build a national network of independently owned appraisal firms to counter the growing influence of appraisal firms owned by national commercial brokers.