There are many steps in the process of reviewing appraisals and our focus in this series of articles is the comparable analysis step to validate the sales comparison approach. This is the second article which is going to delve into the validation of comparable adjustments. Please check out the earlier article on validating the selection of comparables.
If we have verified that the comparable selection is sound, the next step is to make sure the appropriate adjustments are applied to the comparables to appropriately account for the variations of the comparable from the subject. This is further broken down into 2 steps:
- Validate the raw data captured for each comparable property
- Validate the feature level unit adjustments applied to each comparable property.
Validate comparable data using MLS, Public Records, & Photos
This type of validation can be accomplished by comparing it to other verifiable or authoritative sources of property data. The most common data sources are the MLS or the public record data from the county assessor’s office. Appraisers usually have a membership at the MLS and search the county records to get this information. On the other hand reviewers resort to looking up the property on public real estate websites such as Zillow or Realtor.com and search the county records as well. Read the complete article on Profet website.
