An adjustment is the appraiser's statement that the market pays a specific amount for a specific difference — a second bathroom, a third garage bay, a larger lot. That is an empirical claim, and it has to be supported by evidence rather than asserted from experience.
Reviewers, underwriters, and opposing experts all attack the same weak point: adjustments that appear without derivation. Paired sales analysis, regression, cost data, and market surveys are all legitimate support. 'In the appraiser's experience' is not.
This is the subject of a book NextPhase's principal wrote — Navigating the New HUD 4000.1 and Adjustments: Supported or Not — and of instruction delivered to more than 1,000 valuation professionals.
The practical consequence for a client is delay. An unsupported adjustment gets the report kicked back, the file stalls, and a closing or a filing date slips. Support built in at the outset costs nothing extra and prevents all of it.
Written by
Jeremy C. Johnson — President / Valuation Specialist. AQB Certified USPAP Instructor, Certified Residential Real Estate Appraiser, 21+ years and 7,000+ valuation assignments. Statement of capability →
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What the work actually looks like
Real assignments, client details removed — what each engagement actually turned on, rather than how it felt.
A house, a workshop of machine tools, a forty-year firearms collection and a stake in the family company — four disciplines that three appraisers had only partly covered. One engagement, one effective date, one set of assumptions.
A donation the regulations would have aggregated past the appraisal threshold, which the donor had assessed item by item. One qualified appraisal covering the group, itemized, signed inside the window the regulations allow.
An opposing report whose number was not obviously wrong — which is what made it dangerous. It failed on its own certification, and was answered section by section with an independent valuation to the correct definition of value.