What Should You Not Say to an Appraiser? Seven Sentences to Avoid

An appraiser is in the house for perhaps half an hour, and most of that time goes on measuring, photographing and note taking. The talking around it is brief, and owners fill it with the wrong material: the figure they are hoping for, the money the kitchen cost, the reason the closing cannot slip. None of that can enter the report. Documents can.

Why one sentence to the appraiser can cost you money

The appraiser is not your advisor and not the buyer's. The client is whoever ordered the report, usually the lender, and the figure is treated in law as something nobody in the deal may lean on. Regulation Z states that no covered person may directly or indirectly cause the value assigned to a consumer's principal dwelling to be based on any factor other than the independent judgment of the person preparing the valuation, through coercion, extortion, inducement, bribery, intimidation, compensation, instruction or collusion; its first listed example of a violation is seeking to influence a valuer to report a minimum or maximum value¹. Covered person there means the creditor or anyone providing settlement services on the loan: the loan officer, the appraisal management company, the agents¹.

The statute behind that regulation reaches further. It is unlawful for a person with an interest in the underlying transaction to compensate, coerce, extort, collude with, instruct, induce, bribe or intimidate anyone conducting or involved in an appraisal in order to influence the value; parties who suspect a breach of appraisal standards must refer it to the state appraiser certifying and licensing agency, and a first violation carries a civil penalty of up to $10,000 for each day it continues, rising to $20,000 a day for later violations². A seller and a borrower both have an interest in the underlying transaction.

From the appraiser's side the door closes too. Fannie Mae lists as an unacceptable practice any appraisal developed in a manner or direction that favors the cause of a party or the attainment of a specific result, along with an opinion of value that market data does not support³. A target number therefore has no upside: the correct professional response is to ignore it, and the careless response puts a license at risk. What the appraisal costs, who orders it and how long the file takes are covered in the guide to home appraisal cost and process.

Seven things not to say to an appraiser

• "I need it to come in at $540,000." The plainest version of the one request the rules name as improper¹. It also tells the appraiser that everything else you say is advocacy.
• "The refinance only works above $500,000." A target with a reason attached is still a target. Your ratio is the lender's problem to solve, not the valuer's.
• "Let me know if you are coming up short and I will send more sales." Supplying sales is allowed, and a trade is not¹. Send the sales at the start, unconditionally, or not at all.
• "The last appraiser cost us a deal." Read as a hint about future work, this is the language the regulation treats as pressure when a lender uses it¹. From an owner it simply makes you the opposing party.
• "We spent $60,000 on the kitchen, so add $60,000." Spending is not value. An opinion that recent sales cannot support is itself an unacceptable practice, so the appraiser cannot credit a cost the market does not pay³.
• "The area has changed, you know what sort of people live here now." The remark that does the most damage. Protected characteristics must not enter the valuation process at all, and the guide bans the subjective vocabulary that usually follows³.
• "Skip the basement, there is nothing down there." The report must describe the improvements clearly, in detail and accurately, including needed repairs⁴, and failing to comment on negative factors affecting the property is itself flagged as unacceptable³. A concealment discovered later becomes a re-inspection, a repair condition or a lower condition rating.

One more rule covers the hospitality: coffee is fine, a gift card is not. The statute names bribery and inducement among the prohibited acts, and a gift offered on appraisal day is exactly what that language is about².

What to say instead: the facts the rules let you hand over

The same two rules that forbid steering list what is welcome. Asking the person preparing the valuation to consider additional, appropriate property information, including information about comparable properties, to request further detail, substantiation or explanation of the conclusion, to ask that errors be corrected, and to obtain more than one valuation and use the most reliable: all four are named as permitted actions¹, and the statute carries the same exceptions². The practical form is a thin folder and a single cover page.

• The finished area, measured the way the appraiser measures it. For a single-family dwelling the appraiser must follow the ANSI Z765-2021 method and report finished above grade and below grade space consistently⁴. Give your own measurement and sketch, and say where the tax record differs and why.
• Permits with dates. The addition, the deck, the converted attic, the service upgrade. A permit turns a claim into a document.
• Invoices for what cannot be seen. Sewer line, foundation repair with its warranty, rewiring, a radon system.
• Anything the contract section needs. The lender must hand the appraiser the complete ratified contract, and the appraiser has to indicate whether it was analyzed and report the amount and description of concessions, monetary and non-monetary, down to gifts of personal property or taxes and HOA dues somebody agreed to pay⁵. If you promised the buyer a credit, explain it there rather than in conversation.
• Access to every space. Attic hatch, crawl space, locked bedroom, garage, outbuilding. Space nobody enters is space nobody credits.

Can I give the appraiser my own comps?

Yes, and this is the one piece of advocacy the rules protect¹². Make the sales usable instead of numerous. Fannie Mae wants a minimum of three closed comparables reported, normally ones that closed during the previous twelve months, each with its distance in miles and a compass direction measured as a straight line; contract offerings and current listings may serve as supporting data only, and the appraiser remains responsible for deciding which comparables fit the assignment⁶.

So bring closed sales rather than asking prices, each with address, closing date, price and size, and a single line on what makes it like your house. Four or five persuade; twenty read as noise. Hand the sheet over at the beginning of the visit or send it through the lender, then stop. Where closed prices live, and how to adjust them, is in how to find comps for your house.

The neighborhood remark that can taint a report

The Fair Housing Act reaches appraisals directly. It defines residential real estate related transactions to include the selling, brokering or appraising of residential real property, and prohibits discrimination in such a transaction because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin⁷. Fannie Mae's rules sit on top of the statute: characteristics that are not appraisal factors, among them a person's sex, race, color, religion, disability, national origin or familial status, must not be considered in the valuation process, references to the protected status of current or prospective occupants are barred, and the guide names the subjective terms that may not appear, including pride of ownership, good or poor neighborhood, a mention of crime and desirable or undesirable location³.

An owner who volunteers an opinion about who has moved in gains nothing and risks a report that has to be reviewed for the appearance of bias. Facts about the surroundings are a different matter and belong in the folder: a school that opened, a new bus route, the zoning file for the empty lot behind the fence, a street that was reclassified after a bypass.

Owners, buyers, sellers and agents: who says what

Estate and divorce files shift the effective date and sometimes the client; appraisals for refinancing, estates and divorce covers them. Which document carries which weight is in the comparison of appraisal, valuation and automated models.

Where to argue the number after the report arrives

The place to contest a value is not the doorstep but a reconsideration of value, filed in writing through the lender. The federal banking agencies and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau published final interagency guidance on 26 July 2024 describing how institutions can fold reconsideration requests into their risk management, and it accepts that a borrower may hand in verifiable facts the original valuation missed or never had⁸. That is the channel in which better comparables and corrected measurements actually count.

Market movement belongs to the index rather than the conversation. FHFA's monthly report published in September 2026 puts national prices 2.6 percent above July 2025 and 0.3 percent above the previous month, with twelve-month changes by census division running from 0.6 percent in the Mountain division to 6.3 percent in the Middle Atlantic division⁹. If your market moved while the comparables aged, the release is the evidence for a time adjustment. The ways out of a shortfall, with the arithmetic for each, are set out in the low appraisal playbook.

Example: two visits to the same house in Columbus

An illustration with assumed figures, not a real transaction. A 1,940 sq ft house in Columbus, Ohio is under contract at $365,000, the tax record claims 2,120 sq ft, the roof was replaced in 2025, and the basement has a finished family room behind a locked door.

Neither visit changes the Columbus market. What changes is how many verifiable facts reach the report: a measurement matching the standard, a dated permit, a counted room, two nearer sales. Visit A leaves those questions to be settled from the outside, and such settlements tend to be conservative. With the index attached for the time adjustment⁹, Visit B has done everything an owner is allowed to do.

What a cited report does before the appraiser rings

CheckValue produces an AI valuation report. It is no substitute wherever a lender, a court or a tax authority wants a licensed appraiser's signature on a dated opinion. Before appraisal day it does three useful things. It prints a value range for the address with the price per square foot and the district average, so you know whether your contract or your equity assumption sits inside the evidence. It lists the closed comparable sales it relied on with the distance and the month each one closed, which is the sheet you take to the kitchen table instead of an argument. And it shows every adjustment with its coefficient and the official source behind it, from condition and year built to garage, pool and solar, in a numbered reference list.

What it does not do: inspect the house, measure under ANSI, or carry any authority with an underwriter. Run it a second time with the same inputs and the figure does not move, which makes it useful as a reference point rather than as a counter opinion. See it for your own address in the free on-screen preview. Agents and brokers who want the letterhead version for listing appointments will find that on the Pro plan page.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice. Figures and rules carry the year they were published; check the cited source for the current version.

Christian Eckmair

Co-founder, CheckValue · Managing director, CBDNOL GmbH · More than 20 years in real estate in Tenerife and Austria · Reviewed by Josef Eckmair MBA

Christian Eckmair is co-founder of CheckValue and managing director of CBDNOL GmbH (Ansfelden, Austria). He has worked in real estate for more than 20 years in Tenerife and Austria – buying, renovating, letting and selling residential property – and writes about home values, buying checks and ownership records.

Articles by Christian Eckmair →

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