To me a "great" system would be independently verifiable. As in, you appraise your house and you then find you can sell it within 5% of that number. This is not how it actually works, though. The appraisal is often spot on the offer you got for your house, because the appraiser clearly knows the number they need to hit for the loan to go through.
Maybe the system is great for some slice of the market, but for owner occupied detached homes it's pretty shitty.
>The appraisal is often spot on the offer you got for your house, because the appraiser clearly knows the number they need to hit for the loan to go through.
You're talking about the appraiser hired by the lending bank (at your expenses). Their job is not so much "blindly come up with an independent valuation", their job is more to justify the selling price already agreed upon to the lending bank. It also makes sense to take into consideration a price both interested parties already agreed upon - that's important information when trying to determine what something is "worth."
The appraiser's real job is to protect the bank's money by ensuring that the house is sufficiently valuable to serve as collateral for the loan you are taking out.
Maybe the system is great for some slice of the market, but for owner occupied detached homes it's pretty shitty.