Who's telling the buyers — and the agents — in your market?
Private-side case study — no names, no location, just the anatomy of the assignment.
The setup: tenant offered the home they rent. Seller financing, as-is, verbal pressure to commit, contract ready to sign. Tenant reached out to a Realtor about a CMA — and the Realtor told them to get an appraisal first. That referral is how this file landed. Remember that: agents who can't take the listing are still a referral channel for private work.
This profile should raise your antenna every time — seller financing on an SFR between unrelated parties usually means someone already suspects the property won't survive lender scrutiny.
What the assignment actually required:
The engagement structure came first, not last. One client, one additional intended user added at the client's written direction, owner explicitly excluded, all post-delivery communication routed through the client in writing. On a file where a third party has a financial interest in your conclusion, the intended-user language and the engagement letter have to match word-for-word — that's your armor when the phone rings.
Restricted Appraisal Report under SR 2-2(b), which means the workfile carries the weight. There was no contract to analyze and no market exposure to test against, so the value opinion had zero external validation — the support has to be self-contained. The comparable search ran about three hours across staged expansions before the data could represent the subject: nine sales on the grid, each verified, adjusted, and reconciled, with the adjusted range and weighting logic spelled out.
Condition documentation ran deeper than any lender assignment. Observed items included apparent roof leaks, foundation cracks, cracked and peeling paint, exposed wood, damaged and inoperable mechanicals, apparent microbial growth, and evidence of apparent wood-destroying insect damage — each itemized with cost-to-cure ranges for valuation purposes, photo pages for every item, and a future-financing disclosure so the client understands what as-is + private financing means at refinance time. This buyer has no inspector yet, no agent, no underwriter. Your report is the only professional document in the deal.
Final product: 47 pages on a sub-1,300 sf home. That's not padding — that's what "restricted" looks like when it's done right. Minimal isn't the same as thin.
This is the assignment type The Purchase Clarity Appraisal Report™ was designed around, and it's exactly the kind of private work that pays you like the expert you are instead of the vendor an AMC thinks you are. The lender channel will never send you this file. A Realtor sent it — because the tenant asked for a CMA and got honesty instead.
Who's telling the buyers — and the agents — in your market?
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Who's telling the buyers — and the agents — in your market?
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