The State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPF) is developing amendments to by-laws and the law on appraisal to improve the work of the automatic real estate appraisal service, Olha Batova, acting head of the Fund, has said.

"I am now actively engaged in understanding the system, trying to improve both analytics and methods of dealing with unscrupulous appraisers. We have already developed changes to by-laws and to the appraisal law. We have already made the terms of reference for finalizing the database," she said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

According to Batova, the planned changes will allow disabling access to the database for unscrupulous appraisers and simplify the process of canceling their certificate. At the same time, such appraisers can artificially change the base for certain transactions by uploading incorrect reports.

"Legislation does not provide for us the ability to easily deprive an unscrupulous appraiser of a certificate. Moreover, it simply defies common sense: we can disconnect the legal entity in which this appraiser works from the database, but the appraiser himself cannot always be disconnected and deprived of a certificate," she explained.

In addition, an important issue is filling the valuation database with information about the cost of objects to improve automatic analytics.

"Historically, we do not have an information base on the cost of various objects. Any automatic assessment must be based on something. For example, you buy an apartment in a village where there has not been a single sale for five years, and in this case the database cannot automatically make a real assessment. Everyone complains about this, blames the Fund, but it is really impossible to do anything about it either technically or logically. But we will do our best to make it work better," Batova stressed.