My business partner John Cicero, of Miller Cicero, our commercial appraisal firm ran across a pretty interesting book released by McGraw-Hill last year, a well respected publisher.

Here’s an excerpt from the book: The Complete Guide to Financing Real Estate Developments (Hardcover) by Ira Nachem (2007, McGraw-Hill, New York), List price $79.96.

>Since appraisers want to continue to receive assignments, they generally have a desire to satisfy you, their client. You sometimes can play on that desire and get the appraiser to produce a report with values a bit higher (or lower) than he otherwise would report….If you want to make sure that the appraiser is not undervaluing the property, you should tactfully indicate your concern up front…

In other words, its important to pressure the appraiser – in fact, it is part of a strategy to be a successful developer. Of course with the changing credit market landscape, I would think the lessons learned from this book are now limited. Still, it is quite shocking to me how cavalier this quote is and how commonplace it probably was.

For more details, take a look at John’s post over at my other blog Soapbox.