USA Today reports that the National Association of Realtors (NAR) is unhappy about new regulations that require that appraisals be picked independently of the realtor or the bank issuing the loan. According to the article, the NAR complains that the appraisals are being down by inexperienced appraisers who don't understand the local market in which they are evaluating prices. If this is true then it would be expected that there would be more variance in appraisals, but there is no reason that appraisals should come in consistently low. There is no reason to believe that these appraisers would have a bias towards issuing low appraisals.
--Dean Baker
