Apprentice Hands, Master Standards

Anyone learning to value property spends a long stretch able to see what a good valuation looks like without being able to produce one. That gap is uncomfortable, and the most common way out of it is to lower the standard rather than raise the skill.

Take a new agent asked to price a house. The proper way is slow: find recent registered sales of similar homes nearby, adjust for size and condition, and be able to explain each adjustment. The early attempts will be rough, and a senior will find holes in them. The shortcut is to look at what similar houses are being advertised for and pick a number somewhere in the middle. It feels finished. It is also wrong in a way that never improves, because asking prices only record what sellers hope for.

The agent who keeps doing it the slow way, and keeps being disappointed with the result, is the one actually learning. That disappointment is evidence that the eye is ahead of the hands, which is the right way round. Plenty of people ease the discomfort by deciding the shortcut is good enough. The gap closes for them too, only downward, and they spend a whole career producing the rough version without noticing.