Kinnard (1966) noted (page 148) that the "current framework of appraisal theory is essentially the product of the economic theory and the state of the art in appraising in the late 1920s and the early 1930s" and that "much of the framework of current appraisal theory was established on an ad hoc basis under considerable pressure to 'get the job done'." This was after the Great Depression, when the three approaches evolved from distinct concepts of value in which each approach applied to a different definition of value. Kinnard found that current methods were lifted in toto from the 1920s framework of economic theory.
Canonne and Macdonald (2003) note appraisal still has no foundation today. Their review of the literature (A detailed scrutiny of over one hundred major North American real estate handbooks and real estate appraisal manuals, doctoral theses, treatises and anthologies from 1903 through the next 100 years) attempts to answer a number of questions:
Why does the literature deal insignificantly with the concepts of value?
Why did a parallel survey of academic thesis and dissertations reveal similar neglect?
How did this state of affairs come about?
Canonne and Macdonald conclude that appraisal is a relentless lust for technical recipes that can be quickly and technically applied.
Graaskamp (1986) noted that the lack of advancement in appraisal methods results from:
appraisal consumers feeling appraisal methods are not relevant
clients benefit from exploiting appraisal ambiguity
appraisal is highly biased, because the American business ethic allows clients to edit appraisals by withholding fees
appraisers proven invulnerability to malfeasance
Academics are not the only ones to bemoan the lack of advancement in appraisal since the 1930s. Robert McHolland, a real estate appraiser for over 30 years and one of the brightest and the best that left the organization, summarized his concern in McHolland (1994) prior to leaving the business in disgust.
The relentless lust for technical recipes that can be quickly and technically applied for the valuation of brownfields is best exemplified by the widespread use of contaminated sales as the heuristic method for valuing brownfields-instead of using scientific methods. Three issues stand out in the near-global review of the brownfield valuation literature by Syms and Weber (2003):
A complete disregard for the health risk that drives the remedial process
A disregard for remedial uncertainty by assuming it away
The assumption that sites with soil contaminants can be reliably compared for risk
