How the appraiser analyzes the market can make all the difference in the appraised value. Are they describing the market in a way that makes sense in the real world of buyers and sellers? Are they including enough sales in that analysis so that they can report accurate price trends in a given area? How are they reporting that information and developing date of sale adjustments? In that vein, here are some graphs from an analysis I just completed of the North Springs High School District. Every figure in this graph represents a quarterly median where the price noted is the median from the last 3 months. That's quite a jump in the last quarter! It definitely points to this market showing significant increases, but would it make sense to make a 15.6% increasing date of sale adjustment to a sale from April? That's $124,800 for an $800,000 home! Above is the monthly median using the same sales. Fannie Mae used a monthly trend in their recent announcement about including date of sale adjustments in appraisal reports. I tend to avoid this approach because, in my experience, these figures can fluctuate wildly. For instance, here you could claim a 15% positive adjustment for a sale a month ago, but at the same time include a 6% negative adjustment for a sale from 2 months ago. What the?!?! Which brings us to the G.O.A.T., the most bestest way of analyzing the market and translating this data to the real world: Rolling Median. Rolling median is an analysis where each figure represents the median price in the area for the previous 12 months. It can provide a better continuous view of how the median is evolving over time, make it easier to spot gradual changes or patterns, and it can give you more stable estimates with less influence from data outliers. In this case that is still a pretty hefty adjustment from 3 months ago: 5.4% which translates to $43,200 for an $800,000 home. But it would seem that amount is more than justified if you look at the quarterly trends. It seems like back in the day (I'm talking early 2000's here - re-fi boom time) almost all appraisers put "stable" for the market and left it at that. That's what my supervisor trained me to do. But several declining markets, and 3% interest rates and god knows what's happening now later it does seem that meaningful market analysis in the appraisal world, for one thing, has generally changed for the better. If you can't properly describe the market and properly analyze it you probably (uh, definitely) are going to fall short in coming up with a meaningful appraisal. If you as an agent get an appraisal where the market analysis falls short and the appraised value falls short, start your rebuttal with the Neighborhood section of the report and any other errors you can find before getting to the comps. You may find that the appraiser made a series of errors which is a big no-no in the appraisal world (USPAP Standard Rule 1-1(c) states that an appraiser must not render appraisal services in a careless or negligent manner. This includes avoiding a series of errors that, while minor individually, can, in the aggregate, undermine the credibility of the appraisal results.)