Jonathan J Miller, Columnist

Do Experts Value Your Home More Than You?

Real-estate appraisers are more optimistic than homeowners, and that might be a warning sign.

December 18, 2014 at 9:22 PM UTC

Jonathan Miller writes about the housing economy and other aspects of real estate. He began a real estate blog, the Matrix, in 2005, and has written a column for Curbed.com. He is co-founder of Miller Samuel, a residential real estate appraisal company, and the commercial valuation firm Miller Cicero.

Seeing the world through mansion-colored glasses.
Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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Homeowners are almost naturally inclined to have a higher opinion of their properties than anyone else, including potential buyers, lenders, brokers or appraisers. But that wasn't always the case during the bubble years, and inflated real-estate appraisals contributed to the excesses.

In the half-dozen years after the financial crisis, everything got turned upside down: Appraisers became particularly conservative. Appraisal values were consistently lower than homeowner value opinions from 2007 to 2013 and were even seen as a drag on the U.S. housing-market recovery.