Appraising property today appears to be based on the MIACADAPAPWTFBSATDWATMLOTA Principle:  An acronym for “Make It As Complex And Difficult As Possible With The Fee Being Split A Thousand Different Ways And The Most Liability On The Appraiser”.

Home inspection is what appraising once was.  A sane way to make a decent living.  The beauty of it is that it is immune to being hijacked by banks.  The only downside is the incredibly low barrier to entering the field.

The ‘auto programs’ would have the appraisers attribute 100% of all indicated market value differences to a narrow array of gla and age adjustments.

What about the fact the one home had a killer deck, the other only a patio?  What about the fact the one home has total overhaul of utility systems, while the other one was merely a dress up with flashy new granites, but dated utility.

Newsflash;  It costs far more to revamp roof, siding, windows, electric, hvac, and foundation than it does to install a flashy kitchen, bath, flooring, paints, etc.

Rendering most automatic dissemination programs with an achilles heel which is easily exploited, and continues to be the mainstay for independent logic based appraisers like myself;  Relative balance and logic in adjustments.  Otherwise known as distributed allotted adjustments via reasonable proportion.  The big data morons call it off the cuff adjustments in order to sell their faulty products to technocrats, but the rest of us ethical workers in the industry would refer to this as well informed and individualized market analysis.  Kick back anywhere from a 1/5th to a 1/3rd of averaged agla as adjust, distribute the rest in relative balance nickle dime methodology.  Extra deck? half a nickle at 2.5k.  Extra sunroom?  Costs 20k to build, good for at least a dime 10k adjustment, if not more.  That sort of approach.

If appraisers want to be replaced with robots, they are well served with automatic analytic programs which do not take into account the value of human logic and human inspection protocols.