This may sound blunt, but I believe it is true: The appraiser should not be the only adult in the room.

Yet in some transactions, that is exactly what it feels like. By the time the valuation begins, the deal may already have a full emotional infrastructure built around it. The buyer wants it. The seller expects it. The broker is advancing it. The lender is processing it. The attorneys are documenting it.

Everyone is moving forward. Then the valuation asks a very basic question: Is the price supportable?

And suddenly the room gets quiet. Not because the question is unfair. But because too few people asked it seriously early enough.

This is not to say that everyone involved is careless. Far from it. It is to say that deal momentum has a way of making hard questions feel unwelcome. And when that happens, the valuation becomes the first real point of resistance.

That is too much weight to place on one part of the process. Buyers should ask harder questions. Brokers should be more disciplined about economics. Lenders should stay focused on substance, not just process. Advisors should help test assumptions, not merely support the path to closing.

A healthy transaction should be able to withstand scrutiny from multiple directions. It should not depend on one appraiser being the only person willing to challenge the number.

The best deals are not the ones that survive because nobody pushed back. They are the ones that still make sense after serious people do.