A) As an appraiser I NEVER base an appraisal primarily on any one sale. I’m looking for the trend, not the exception; no one sale makes or breaks an appraisal – not ever. By the same token, I don’t limit the number of comps I analyze in a report to only 3 sales unless I have absolutely no other choice – and that never happens when I’m appraising homes.
B) I said that the oldest comp (12/28/2006) happened to be most similar overall except for the pool. I didn’t say I’d weight it that much more heavily than the other two sales. Trust me, If you didn’t like what the oldest sale was saying you REALLY wouldn’t be happy with the results with weighting the most recent sale.
C) I am required to back my opinion up and I am compelled to work with the data at hand. I don’t get to opt out of an assignment just because the data is sparse. I almost never get the data I’d LIKE to get. Nevertheless, a lack of recent or similar doesn’t give me more latitude to insert my personal discretion into an appraisal. The data is what it is regardless of how I “feel” about it.
D) If you’re saying that the lack of activity is due to the lack of supply and that there are more buyers than sellers right now then perhaps that’s so. I’m not interpreting average exposure times of 2+ months as being indicative of a smoking hot market. The same holds true for sales prices that predominantly wind up closing at the bottom of the listing ranges. Reasonable people may have to agree to disagree on that one.
E) If you’re rebutting one of my appraisals, you’re rebutting my selection of comparable data based on similarity and/or proximity. As far as my clients are concerned the only way an agent’s rebuttal would be considered more credible than my appraisal would be if they came up with data that was either more similar or more recent than the data I’m using. The only way that’s going to happen is if I’m incompetent with respect to researching the comparable data. They will not be rebutting one comp; they’ll be rebutting all of them, and that only works if all their comps are more similar than all of my comps.
F) I ALWAYS give the realty agents involved the opportunity to give me the data they think I should consider in an appraisal. In the last 10 years I think I’ve been handed a grand total of a half-dozen relevant sales transactions that I wasn’t already aware of. None of those occurred in assignments involving residential real estate – they were all commercial properties that were not listed in the MLS or on Loopnet and were not reported in COMPS. I honestly cannot recall the last time a residential agent came up with a relevant piece of data of which I wasn’t already aware.
H) The reason I give the agents the opportunity to feed me comps is not because I honestly think they’ll come up with something I didn’t already know, but to prevent them from saying I didn’t give them a chance. It works really well, too. That’s one reason I generally don’t get rebuttals or appeals, and why I never lose when they do appeal.
I) I obviously have a personal opinion about the regional trends, but that’s not the same thing as my professional opinion in any given assignment. I allow the data to speak for itself. Luckily for me, the data speaks quite well by itself.
I’ve signed a lot of appraisals with value conclusions that are, in terms of my personal opinions, very unreasonable. I can do that without a qualm because I recognize that nobody cares what I think on a personal level.
