The economic role of valuers in real property markets

Abstract

Globally, real estate trade is highly regularized. Usually, the market value is not negotiated simply between the seller and potential buyer but based on an assessment performed by a professional valuer, known as a surveyor or appraiser. This paper inquires about the economic role of valuers in real estate markets. An institutionally embedded framework for valuation intermediation is developed that elucidates a multi-tiered imperfect information cascade. First, the valuer is understood as middleman counteracting information uncertainties on product quality of real estate. An additional constraint is constituted by information asymmetries between valuer and contractor. Drawing on New Institutional Economics, we discuss how the valuation professional with regularizations evolves globally as the superior institutional response to this cascade of information imperfections. A case of empirical evidence is provided for this concept of the regularized valuer.