In the context of a real estate appraisal, what is an overimprovement (or superadequacy)? Per the 14th edition of The Appraisal of Real Estate (p. 624) it is a “…type of functional obsolescence caused by something in the subject property that exceeds market requirements but does not contribute to value an amount equal to its […]
Appraisers try to accommodate their client’s interests. There is nothing wrong with this per se. Appraisers commonly write, “at the client’s instruction…” or “per the client’s request…”, then the appraiser describes what the client instructed or what the client requested, as well as what the appraiser did to comply with the instruction or request. This […]
Sometime back a Realtor acquaintance called to ask how much to adjust for a swimming pool. The question implied that we appraisers have access to some kind of secret “book” in which we maintain the dollar amounts of our various adjustments. Would that this were true! I explained to the Realtor© we had to extract […]
Complexities in appraisal work come up periodically, depending on the market you work in and the types of properties that are common to the area. I office in Colorado and have had the opportunity to appraise in rural and extremely remote areas. In the case of one particular market area, the trip one-way takes over […]
Many appraisers are worried that a so-called desktop appraisal will not be USPAP compliant if a third party to inspects and/or photographs the subject property. USPAP does not make an issue of who inspects the property, nor who photographs it. USPAP does not require the appraiser to inspect the subject property. Nor does USPAP require […]
Benjamin Disraeli was the Victorian era Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He famously said “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics”. He died in 1881. This was after Sir Francis Galton coined the term standard deviation, but before he popularized concepts like of correlation and the Central Limit Theorem with […]