more ... Regulations affecting appraisers largely useless - Mortgage Mess - MSNBC.com

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You can't always be first .... but you CAN be NEXT

Appraisers and realtors had nothing to do with rising home prices. The market sets the prices, not the realtors or appraisers.

$300 billion dollars in fraudulent mortgage money was added to the market. That is why prices went up. Now that money is gone, and prices are coming down.

Real Estate Appraisers, if they're doing their jobs correctly, can do nothing about rising or falling prices.

All they can do is evaluate the property, find comparable sales that indicate the recent sales of similar properties, and give their opinion about how much the market is likely to pay for that property should it be put on the market that day.

I used to be a licensed RE appraiser here in Maine.

Appraisers job is to ensure a house actually has market value to cover the notes on the property, which usually means that the house is worth reasonably close to it's selling price. They do that by comparing recent sales of like properties. If they have sold in that range then deal is blessed.