[dragonwriter]

> he said somthing like 'well if thats what your offering thats what it's worth'.

The appraisers real job (when a mortgage is involved) for the bank is to assess the best offer they could get besides yours, since the bank wants to know what the property would sell for were your unable to pay the mortgage.

Presumably, if you are buying the house, you are (exceptions clearly exist, this is a simplified model) the most interested buyer, they really should be looking as to what the next most interested buyer would pay.

With large enough markets and commodity properties, which probably account for most housing sales, it's not entirely unreasonable to assume that the difference between those two is negligible, though, so I can see how it becomes a default approach.