I can’t speak for how realty agents look at it, but I can tell you that appraisers are trained to look at their assignments strictly in terms of property characteristics. We’re not supposed to be interested in the leather whips and chains these property owners keep in their bedrooms or whether we like the color of their carpets or whether the house is a mess when we look at it – those are all personal characteristics that are basically supposed to be invisible to us as we do our thing. Whether I like the property owner or hate them, my professional opinion is supposed to remain unaffected because I’m not appraising the individual, I’m appraising the property. In fact, I try very hard to not have any kind of relationship with the property owners beyond that which is necessary to do my job.

So if you want to look at paired transactions to see if there’s a loss in there, or you want to talk about data and trends, that’s one thing. Putting an individual’s name to it and personalizing it is unnecessary and uncalled for. Everyone here knows what it means when a person is taking a loss. Singling that individual out for additional attention doesn’t add anything good to the analysis and it doesn’t help us to better understand the situation. IMO.

PS, you can correct me if I’m mistaken, but I remember a couple months back when there was a certain amount of discomfort and dismay when one poster looked up another poster’s listing in the MLS and then made comments about the individual as well as their personal decisions. That’s an example of what we’re talking about here. It added absolutely nothing good to the discussion and only served to create a problem. A problem I hope to not have to see again.

I’ll be completely candid about this – I’m hoping to influence your opinion on this subject.