Appraisals (disclosure, sales, fees, comparables)

[Homewardbound66]

Can anyone enlighten me as to how appraisers find comparable properties when the State is a non-disclosure State. I mean if they can't find what a place sold for how do they compare your house to them? What do they use as comparables? Would they use listing prices? Thanks!

[NM Appraiser]

We join the local board of Realtors for a rather hefty yearly fee and then we pay another rather impressive quarterly fee for access to the MLS. All those fees add up, not to mention the required continuing education requirements for our license and those required by NAR as well. Hence the cost of appraisals go up just like everything else.

[chet everett]

The "non disclosure" is to the PUBLIC / non-real estate professional. Other members of MLS and those within the system (including regulators and bankers) have the data.

I personally agree with NM Appraiser that this only tends to make those states more expensive for the transactions around real estate, and serves no good purpose in this day and age...

[ETex2]

Appraising homes is easy in Texas, since most sales go through the MLS. But commercial is another story altogether. Very few transactions go through the MLS, esp. in the large metro areas. We utilize expensive verification companies like Co-star, but they end up verifying maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the transactions out there. Calling buyers and sellers is sometimes productive, but the bottom line is - we are not able to get the best sales data in many instances. Makes commercial appraisals very difficult to do.