The Kansas Court of Appeals recently reversed a decision by the District Court that set aside the opinion of the Kansas Board of Tax Appeals. At the center of the case was the valuation methodology employed by the taxing jurisdiction’s appraiser. The Court of Appeals found that the jurisdiction’s expert witness not only erred, but also violated USPAP by valuing the various segments of the property and summing the individual values to arrive at an overall valuation conclusion. The court relied upon USPAP Standard Rule 1-4(e):

“Pursuant to USPAP Standard Rule 1-4(e) (2001), an appraiser must analyze the effect on value, if any, of the assemblage of the various estates or component parts of a property and refrain from valuing the whole solely by adding together the individual values of the various estates or component parts. Although the value of the whole may be equal to the sum of the separate estates or parts, it also may be greater or less than the sum of such estates or parts. Therefore, the value of the whole must be tested by reference to appropriate data and supported by an appropriate analysis of such data.”

The Court goes on to state:

“There is no question that Kubert violated USPAP Rule 1-4(e). In executing each of his approaches to value, Kubert segmented the property, valued each segment individually, and then added the values to get his final valuation.”

The case can be found here.

The California State Board of Equalization recently released a draft of the proposed Guidelines for Substantiating Additional Obsolescence for Personal Property and Fixtures as part of a project to assist county assessors’ staff in identifying and quantifying obsolescence for personal property tax valuation.

Although the proposed guidelines do not offer anything that can be considered groundbreaking, they do serve as an overview of the process for identifying and calculating extraordinary obsolescence.

The MIT Center for Real Estate recently released its 2009 Q2 Transaction-Based Index indicating an 18.1% decline in commercial real estate sale prices compared to the 1^st quarter and, are you ready for this, a 39.2% decline from the peak in the 2^nd quarter of 2007. 

Some good news is that their summary analysis states: 

“The big news this quarter is not just the magnitude of the drop, but the fact that transaction volume actually increased in the presence of this decline, the first volume increase since last summer,” 

A pick up in transaction volume is a welcome sight to us property tax folks.

Today I came across an interesting article titled Big Box Recycling that discusses what happens when big boxes go dark.  Some of the alternative uses mentioned are churches, swap meets, go-cart tracks, schools, private prisons and even a museum dedicated to spam. I will throw in roller skating rinks, bars, flea markets and a meat processing facility, to name a few.