402: Market Data Research

The appraiser is responsible for adequately researching market data from all reasonably available and appropriate sources of information for the location and property type being appraised (including public records transfer information and, if appropriate, data from local real estate brokers who are not active in the local multiple listing service) -- even if this results in the appraiser spending more time and incurring additional expenses in performing appraisal assignments in certain geographic locations or for particular property types.  If the appraiser does not consider all relevant data, overlooks relevant data sources, or relies on incomplete data in the research and analysis stage of the appraisal process, the result may be a poor quality appraisal that could have a discriminatory effect.  For example, when the only data that is researched and relied on is data obtained from a sales data reporting service or a local multiple listing service -- and that data source was not used for most of the sales transactions in a particular neighborhood or market area -- the appraiser may arrive at an inaccurate opinion of value.