no motivation. I invited one appraiser to speak at a luncheon to a group of agents, and he said it's not in his interest to go higher than sales price. Because if something goes bad with the loan down the road, and there is a forensic underwriter scrubbing the file, he may get called on the stand to testify why he valued the house at $X when it was under contract for less.
On the "grid" where you have the comps listed and all the value adjustments, you come up with the net adjusted price for each. If the 3 net adjusted prices are $630k, $635k, and $675k, and the house is under contract for $650k, then $650k is the appraised value because the price is "bracketed" by a lower & higher value. That same appraisal, if the parties decide they want to increase sales price to $660k so the seller can cover $10k in closing costs, just submit the amendment to the appraiser, and bam...now appraised value is $660k because it's still bracketed. "when the subject property price is bracketed by the adjusted comp prices, the sales price IS the market price."
