I had and still have many questions about appraisals & appraisers work and I thought share them with you and get your opinions. They are:
Questions Set#1:
Are you happy with the appraisal you get? Do appraisals really reflect the fair market value of the property? Do you think appraisers do a great job and spend enough time to derive the fair market value?  Do you think appraisers do their jobs independently and they are not being influenced by lenders? Do you think appraisers should have a copy of sales contract?

I address each question and give my personal thoughts based on my experiences on each question.

I know when I do the comp it takes me at least 6-8 hours to do my job. I do necessary adjustments using several comparable properties that meet certain requirements. I don’t agree with and don’t use the CMA generated from MLS and do not use avg. price/SQ. Ft. from MLS. Anyhow, it takes me at least a day to come up with a good comp.

Also, I have been very good negotiator and were able to get the sale price in some cases about 20% less than the listing price in a Buyer market (last year).

Last Year (Buyer Market):
Last year out of 4 contracts that I had, 3 of them appraised exactly the same amount of the sales contracts and one came up only $1000 more than the sale price. I had seen the same trends, appraisals equal to sales price, with other REALTORS. That cannot be a coincidence, it only suggests me that appraisers just looked at the sale price and use them without any further serious investigations. Otherwise, it implies that, all real estate agents are the same or better than professional appraisers, which is not true at all.

If and when appraisers just take the negotiated sale price and copy or derive their values from there, they diminish the value of real estate agents works and expertise’s (it is not good).

My Answers to Questions Set#1:
Based on the above situations and experiences from the last year, Buyer Market, my answers to all of the questions set#1 are No.

What are Your Answers to Questions Set#1?
I know each of you have different experiences and views on these questions, and most probably, they are different than mine, but I like to see your points of view and reasoning’s for each of the following question. When I get enough inputs, I will publish the survey result here.

Are you happy with the appraisal you get?
Do appraisals really reflect the fair market value of the property?
Do you think appraisers do a great job and spend enough time to derive the fair market value? 
Do you think appraisers do their jobs independently and they are not being influenced by lenders?
Do you think appraisers should have a copy of sales contract?

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