re: Property Appraisal Question

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Most appraisers are scared to over-value in this market because they will be blamed when it softens/crashes/etc.

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We were the beneficiaries of this on the buying end a year ago. We got our current house for 114k less than their asking price and $64k less than our offer price because appraisers were recently put on notice that they're accountable for over-appraising houses. So appraisals started coming in a lot lower. This was right as interest rates started to rise and the massive bidding wars on houses was just ending. Comps in our area were a bit difficult because not many houses had sold in the appraising area and houses are quite spread out. They had to make a lot of adjustments to the comps used in order to derive the value.