Real estate appraisers use the term "plus or minus" and symbols like +/- a lot. It's not that we don't have confidence in what we are doing. It's because we are reporting on and analyzing a market. A market in which every item is unique. It's artscience.
The real estate appraisal industry, like most industries, is stuck in old thinking. Perhaps the worst of this thinking is the term and concept of Neighborhood. Most people correctly understand neighborhood as a collection of homes and perhaps businesses near their homes. Google images of neighborhood and you get what most people imagine a neighborhood [...]
I was recently engaged for an assignment in a local beach town. A former resident is suing, well, everybody, for damage done to his home during Superstorm Sandy. It seems a boat rear-ended his house. Or failed to yield, or something like that. Let's call it a moving violation. My client requested that I analyze [...]
