There are numerous misconceptions about what appraisers do and how appraisers work.

One of these is that appraisers arbitrarily assign values to properties or advocate for a client's desired outcome.  This is absolutely not true.  Unfortunately, this misconception is fed by the actions of a few unethical appraisers who provide inaccurate and/or non-market-based value opinions.

I was recently asked to review one of these non-market-based opinions... in that instance, the appraiser failed to report two recent listings of the property.  Both listings were lower than the appraised value by $20,000 to $40,000.  Both listings expired after substantial time periods without producing a sale of the property.  Both listings were openly exposed to the public and readily available to (literally) hundreds of Realtors, appraisers, etc.

Nope... no renovations or changes were made to the property to substantiate the higher value.

In my opinion, any reasonable person (appraiser or not) would conclude the property to be worth less than its recently expired list price... when you go to the grocery store, do you pay more for a gallon of milk than its advertised price?  In this case, the appraiser ignored the listings (either through fraud or inadequate research) to conclude a substantially higher value.

Appraisers estimate market value by researching and analyzing actions of buyers and sellers in the marketplace, and credible opinions are essential to a healthy real estate market.