I was standing outside and a lady in a civilian type small pick up truck drove by my house and took a picture. When I asked(yelling from a distance) why she was taking a picture of my house she said it was for an appraisal,and drove off. Who has the right to do an appraisal on my property? I also would like to know would a quick picture of the front of my house actually be useful in an appraisal(wouldn't the interior and more detail be needed?) This just seems weird to me. Am I being paranoid? Thanks for any help with my concern

A good appraisal would be the entire structure inside and outside being physically looked at and noted as such on paper taking exact measurements of each room. What I think that lady in the pick up was doing was taking a photo as a comparison home for an appraisal that she was doing on another property. Generally an appraisal is done by the buyer to ascertain if the property and it's structures are really worth X amount of dollars. The inside is examined also noting such things as a working fireplace, cental air conditioning, updating of the kitchen and bathrooms, etc. No, you cannot do an appraisal from just taking a photo from the street.

Ok, most likely it is for a home in your area, if you do an appraisal, you do several things, you get the selling price of homes in the local area that have sold recently, you get prices for homes that are currently for sell, and you also get prices for homes that were taken off the market.
They get the stats of the home from the tax dept.

I know when I had my last property appraised they had lists of 8 other homes in the area and their values as part of the appraisal process, and they had a photo of the front of all of them. Plus it is not against the law to take a photo of a home from the street

Thank you. I knew it wasn't against the law just didn't know if she had a nefarious intentions. I knew I was being paranoid.