However, if you’re basing your experience off of how things are right now then I’d suggest considering a few factors that appraisers nationwide are struggling to understand. The bubble we’re dealing with right now is completely unparalleled from a real estate standpoint and is a scary false bubble.

Real estate has been flying through the roof because there aren’t as many homes on the market. Have you stopped to ask why that is? It’s in part due to foreclosed properties not being available to purchase. My team normally does 15-20k preforeclosure, REO, or bankruptcy appraisals a month. The last year we’ve been doing 4-6k a month due to the moratorium. I have to triple the size of my team by the end of summer because once the moratorium ends June 30th (likely to be extended) we are expected to do over 100k appraisals given how many people are unable to pay their mortgage right now.

So, you have a legitimate gripe with appraisers in general (I share the same sentiment with many of them) but from direct experience in this industry I can tell you that this last year has been unlike anything I’ve seen or likely ever will see. The housing prices jumping through the roof week over week makes no sense on the surface and if you thought about what’s driving it you’d be seriously concerned about what’s coming next. In short, no way would I be buying a home right now because your value just won’t be there when the dust settles.

Also, as for lagging values, you realize comps have to support values given on properties right? If there aren’t comps then there is no way to support the value. You can call that a lagging value or slow to react to pricing but that’s how appraising anything from baseball cards to homes works.