Bracketing a 6 acre parcel when the nearest comp is 14 miles out
Say a buyer is under contract on a 1,280 square foot house on 6 acres in a county with maybe 90 arms length sales a year. Contract price 148k, cash out purchase money loan behind it, so the lender orders a full appraisal rather than taking a waiver. Appraisal comes back at 139k. The three comps are 9, 11 and 14 miles out, two on 1 to 2 acres with a flat site adjustment of 8k for the extra acreage, and the third a 2019 sale time adjusted forward by a percentage the report describes as a market conditions adjustment without showing the paired sales behind it. The subject has a detached 900 square foot shop that got 6k, and shops like that tend to move a listing in that kind of market. If two sales inside 4 miles from the last 14 months are missing from the report, both on acreage, both closed above 150k, and one of those was appraised conventionally by the broker's account, that is real grounds to pursue a reconsideration of value. The tradeoff is timing. An ROV through the lender's AMC often costs 7 to 10 days, which matters when a rate lock has only three weeks left. Whether it is worth pursuing usually comes down to whether the seller will move on price at all, since if they will not, the ROV is the only lever left before deciding to eat the difference or walk. In thin rural markets, ROVs do move when the missing comps are genuinely closer and more recent than what the report used, so it is worth asking others whether one has actually worked for them in a similarly thin market.