the appraisals seem to come in ridiculously close to offer price every time.
Few people make wild offers unrelated to the market price and even if they do, sellers rarely accept them. So it makes sense that the appraisal usually comes close to the offer price since both the buyer and seller usually do at least some research of looking around at comparable sales.
Though I saved $25K on a house once when the appraisal came in $25K under my offer price. I told the sellers that the bank wouldn't give me a loan at the current terms over the appraised price and I didn't have another $25K in cash to put down on the house, so I'd have to withdraw the offer. The seller made an appraisal appeal that went no where, so they reduced the selling price by $25K.
I had similar, however that was 6 years ago or so when the market was just starting to heat up. The appraisal looked at previous sales, but there was such low inventory that there weren't many comps to compare to, and none of them recent. The seller wouldn't come down much, so in order to make up the difference I had to cut into my down payment (which means instead of 20% down it was only 11% down, as only the appraised value counted toward my LTV and I got stuck with PMI for a few years).
Few people make wild offers unrelated to the market price and even if they do, sellers rarely accept them. So it makes sense that the appraisal usually comes close to the offer price since both the buyer and seller usually do at least some research of looking around at comparable sales.
Though I saved $25K on a house once when the appraisal came in $25K under my offer price. I told the sellers that the bank wouldn't give me a loan at the current terms over the appraised price and I didn't have another $25K in cash to put down on the house, so I'd have to withdraw the offer. The seller made an appraisal appeal that went no where, so they reduced the selling price by $25K.