Most of my appraisal happened in the guy's car
I asked the listing agent if I could tag along on the appraisal for a split level I was under contract on, and she said sure as long as I stayed out of the way. So I stayed out of the way.
The guy walked in, took a laser measurement of the main floor, photographed every room including the inside of the electrical panel, opened the crawlspace hatch, stuck his head in for about four seconds, and was back on the porch. Nine minutes, I timed it because I felt like I was watching a magic trick go wrong. Then he sat in his car in the driveway for forty minutes.
I knocked on his window eventually and apologized and asked what he was doing. He turned the laptop toward me. He had six sales pulled and was throwing out four of them. One was a flip with a finished basement that had never been permitted, one backed a rail line, one sold to a relative. He said the walkthrough tells him what the house is, and the rest of the job is arguing with himself about which sales are actually comparable and what a below grade square foot is worth on this street versus the one four blocks over.
He said the part clients think they're paying for is the inspection and the part that decides the number is the grid. Came in three thousand over contract. He never asked me what the contract price was and I checked later, the price was on the order he'd been sent, so he knew.