Something seems a bit off, then, because if the market is appreciating, then the appraisers should be taking that into account. As another commenter said, they were certainly doing that in hot West Coast markets like SF and Seattle. Both houses I purchased (each in those locations) appraised at the contract price, and I bought them both within the last 7 years.

They do, but it lags. If prices are going up fast enough, given the way these things are determined, it can easily be the case that damn near every house isn't appraising at what it sells for.

The "solution" to this, in the run up to the '08 crisis, was for appraisers to "help out" by fudging their figure to make it match the sale price. I know this because a real estate agent whose husband was a loan officer, told me so. "I know they were just trying to help out with these new regulations, but it's had the unintended consequence that appraisers can't fudge their numbers slightly higher to match an offer that's only a couple percent above the natural appraisal, like they used to". LOL, yeah, the exact thing they were trying to accomplish was an "unintended consequence". Talk about not being able to understand something because your paycheck depends on it.

Possibly some appraisers in at least some markets have figured out ways around this, and are back to fudging numbers. I dunno.

It comes down to what the appraiser is really saying with their appraisal. Are they saying that in today's market this is what the house could go for or are they predicting the future value outside of a bubble

“Appraised at contract price” tells you how a bit about how grimy that process (that you’re paying for) is.

My appraiser (on a refi) was walking around the house with me and basically asked what I thought the place was worth. That was what it appraised for. (The contract price on an original sale has the same property: what the buyer thought it was worth.)

Ideally those are tethered, but the appraisals didn’t give me a great sense of independence.

If appraisals were arranged and paid for by lenders, I think appraisals would become a lot more honest. But most lenders these days will only perform due diligence to the extent Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac require (and they already have a lot of requirements, which is why the underwriting process is so maddening), so the onus is really on the backers to require appraisers have some sort of fiduciary duty to them.

Counterpoint: as home prices keep climbing, many of the kind of things that would be caught by a home inspection become less and less financially relevant. When you're buying a million dollar house, 20K for a new roof is in the noise