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Originally Posted by jmsremax

First off when did I ever say not to use a home inspector and I never said a CMA was an appraisal. Second, home buyers should use all the tools out there to assist them with purchasing a home.

I would take a home inspector over an appraiser any day in my experiences with both. 90% of the home inspectors I've met are people from Non-real estate professions that have taken an on-line course, paid the membership fee for a "certification" and hung up a shingle. PEOPLE - do your homework before you hire ANY home inspector! They do not even have to be licensed in most states, don't have to have ANY real estate, construction or engineering experience/training. I can become a home inspector next week. Literally. It takes that little time to do the online work, send my money in, and wow, I'm a certified home inspector. I'm not saying there are not good ones out there. I'm saying there is a need to verify for yourself the qualifications of ANY home inspector, because they have very low requirements for entry into that field. A home inspector is not even required to be independent. They can have biases and connected interests that do not work to the advantage of the buyer (or seller). My reasoning, all the appraiser I've dealt with worked for the town or bank. A lack of knowledge, or limited experiences with the appraisal profession. 90% of appraisers are, in fact independent. We do work for any number and types of clients. We either work for our own company, or for an appraisal company. Very few banks maintain their own in-house appraisers, except in a review position. I have yet to see an appraiser give an estimate that a buyer thought was reasonable and this goes back to 2006 when the market was still going up. It is not the appraiser's position to give values that buyers think are reasonable. It it the appraiser's duty to give unbiased value opinions. If the appraiser spent all his efforts to give the value desired by one specific party, it wouldn't be an appraisal! Why pay for an appraisal just to demand that it be biased and support your opinion? It all goes back to the appraiser being an independent source of valuation that IS NOT a champion of either party's cause/position! Otherwise, it isn't an appraiser you have hired, it's an advocate (actual legal term for person that is paid to support a specific position) Also, appraisals are done annually for town and cities and the price they derive will also determine your property taxes (may not be annual in other states, but in MA it is). Again, this shows the lack of true knowledge of the profession and the processes involved. While the county appraisers call them appraisals, NinjaVanish is 100% correct. These are NOT appraisers like those that you would use for individual home values. They are merely employees of the taxing authority. They do not inspect the interior. In our area, they often drive by the house, and guess at the size. Then, they plug the square foot into a statistical program, punch in a quality, condition and location factor that they establish (without the benefit of an actual inspection!!), and boom, a value is spit out. The correct term is Mass-Appraisals. They have little relevance except for the taxing authority to use to raise revenue. In our area, it is a racket by the taxing authority, with a built-in annual appreciation and a re-appraisal with new mass-appraisal stats every 5 years. They value everything as high as they can get away with, because that means more tax revenue. I spend substantial time every year either fighting these valuations for individuals, or explaining to the homeowner why they can't afford my $400 fee (not to mention the other $1250- 1500 in attorney and court costs) to fight a bogus mass appraisal value that will result in an ad valorem tax increase of $150-500. Often it's just not economically feasible to fight the county. This is known by the county, hence the "racket" comment. The point is, these are NOT the appraisers that are used when you want to get an independent valuation. We had clients going to town hall meetings to fight over home appraisals because their estimates were still going up even when things were headed south. I do not trust them at all. Again, this is merely in my experiences. Again, you are NOT talking about independent appraisers. You are talking about tax authority employees whose job is to raise revenue for the taxing authority. Apples and oranges.

At least with a CMA you are able to see what people were willing to spend on a home and what % discount or premium they paid over listing price. To me, this is a good way to derive a market value....what people actually paid since buyers and sellers are the market not an appraiser. Again, this represents a lack of knowledge of what an appraiser does. An appraiser's job is to use this very market data, the interactions of buyers and sellers, the physical data of the property, the understanding of the subject's local and general market, the effects of economic and governmental factors, and far more factors than are considered in a CMA, to estimate the value. Anyone that relies on a CMA should become knowledgeable as to what is involved in producing a CMA. I am a member of the local NAR's (National Association of Realtors) MLS system, so I can not only use the sales data contained there in as a part of my appraisal process, but so I can also have the information needed to contact the parties to the transactions and find out the ACTUAL thoughts and motivations behind the sales. It's called data verification, and it is not done as a part of standard CMA's. However, by being a MLS member, I CAN go to the MLS website, click on a simple link, input a home address, and produce a CMA, without ever looking at the subject house, knowing the motivations of the parties to the sale, or verifying anything at all about the subject or sale properties. The value range, sales selection, and report are all done automatically by a program within the website. How accurate can that be? Just saying, before anyone make a judgement on the validity of a value source, they need to study what is required of the person that is producing that report. Please note, CMAs are merely a starting point and from there you get a home inspection and then deal with the appraisers to help figure out a price that seems reasonable. My process for my clients was a CMA, home inspection, and you are pretty much forced to get an appraisal from your lender anyways. However, none of my clients paid more than 90% of the value the appraiser came up with on a property they were interested in. Just because your clients paid less than the appraised value doesn't mean the property wasn't worth the appraised value!!! Were they unhappy that they purchased the properties below market value. I'd bet they were happy for that fact!

Sorry Brad for jacking your thread.

Since these discussions deal with the resources needed to make informed purchase decisions, it is not a thread jack to put the truth out there for consumers to know. The point I would make here, for Brad, is that you need to be aware of the qualifications and requirements to be a professional in the various fields mentioned. You need to know what is involved in the production of their work product. You cannot simply accept that a product has value because it is from some source that someone says you should use. It all flows back to the individual that is involved, and the experience, education and qualifications of that individual.