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Leader in the Appraisal of

Complex Properties Since 1926

 
 



Real Estate Appraisal

Utility P&A contractually provides a wide array of professional appraisal services for residential and commercial real estate parcels. All of our Real Estate appraisers are designated Registered Professional Appraisers by the Board of Tax Professional Examiners.  The primary responsibility to our clients is to develop fair and uniform market values so that the assessing authority is in full compliance with all Property Tax code rules and regulations, while assuring the local taxpayers representative and equitable treatment.

 Area-wide data involving economic forces such as demographic patterns, employment and income patterns, trends in real estate prices and rents, interest rates, availability of property, and economic and climatic factors that may affect production of rural lands are collected from various sources.  Common data characteristics within each county are collected in the field and entered into each respective district’s computer database. This property data drives the computer-assisted mass appraisal (CAMA) approach to valuation.  The network-based systems are augmented by databases that reside as various applications on personal computers (PC). In mass appraisal applications this information can be useful for comparing or combining neighborhoods or for developing neighborhood ratings which are introduced as adjustments in mass appraisal models.

Neighborhood analysis involves the examination of how physical, economic, governmental and social forces, as well as all other influences affecting property value.  Each neighborhood may be characterized as being in a stage of growth, stability, or decline. The growth period is a time of development and construction.  In the period of stability, the forces of supply and demand are about equal. The period of decline reflects diminishing demand or desirability.   The growth and decline stages present the real estate appraiser the most challenges, as general property use can change considerably and sometimes unexpectedly.   For example, while most declining neighborhoods will further deteriorate with time, they may also become economically desirable again and experience renewal, reorganization, rebuilding, or restoration marked by modernization and increased demand.  P&A real estate appraisers analyze whether a particular neighborhood is in a period of growth, stability, or decline, and then predict changes that will affect future use and value.

Site analysis provides a basis for allocating values to land and improvements, for analyzing highest and best use, and for estimating locational obsolescence. A description of the subject building and other improvements provides a basis for analysis of comparable sales and rents, for the development of capitalization rates or multipliers, for highest and best use analysis of the site as improved, and for estimation of reproduction or replacement cost new and physical and functional depreciation. This analysis should show how the factors relate to the utility, and marketability of the subject property and, ultimately, its market value.

Improvement analysis describes relationships among items and compares them to competing properties and to neighborhood standards. The physical condition of the building components is particularly important because it provides the basis for estimates of effective age and remaining economic life, essential components of functional obsolescence calculations.

For new real estate clients, P&A real estate appraisers generally adopt existing cost schedules. These schedules are then updated and maintained by P&A to reflect current market value conditions. Sales are generally collected by the Appraisal District staff and provided to P&A for sales ratio analysis. Appraisal statistics, central tendency. Mean and median ratios, standard deviation, and coefficient of dispersion are available for each class of property to determine both the level and uniformity of the appraised values involved in the study.

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