WHAT IS MARKET VALUE?
by J. P. Vaughan The explanation of “market value” in this article applies to single family houses only. Different methods apply to apartments and other commercial properties. The meaning of “market value” confuses many people. As consumers, most people shop at retail stores and pay the price printed on the price tag. A sweater is worth $24.95 because the price tag says so. A hammer is worth $10.95 because the price tag says so. We really don’t question it, because we are programmed to pay the amount of money listed on the price tag. When stores have sales on certain items, it is because the store did not sell all of these items for the listed price within a certain period of time. The sweater was not worth $24.95 to enough people. Therefore, the store must now lower the price to persuade people to buy the remaining sweaters. At the beginning of the Fall clothing season, the market value of the sweater was $24.95. In March, when we have more interest in Spring clothes, the market value
Finding the market value of your property is simply a matter of discovering the price most people would pay for it in the shape it’s in today. That is the Property Appraiser’s job. He is an appraiser of property. It’s not quite that simple, however, because he has to find what this value would be for every piece of property in the County, no matter how big or how small. There are basically two kinds of appraisal: mass appraisal, in which a community is revalued for tax purposes; and fee appraisal, in which only one piece of property is being appraised, often used in conjunction with mortgages. Both types of appraisal utilize the same appraisal process. In mass appraisal, large numbers of properties are appraised at one time by adopting standard techniques so that equity of appraisal might be achieved between all properties. This office only does mass appraisal. Highlands County has about 1,029 square miles of land area covering approximately 658,000 acres. In fact he has to find the va
Finding the market value of your property involves discovering the price most people would pay for it in its present condition. It’s not quite that simple, however, because the assessor has to find what this value would be for every property, no matter how big or small. But the assessor’s job doesn’t stop there. Each year it has to be done all over again, because the market value of almost everything changes from one year to the next-as we all know.
A. Fair market value is the price for which a property will sell on the open market between a willing buyer and a willing seller neither being under compulsion to buy or sell as of a specific date. Generally, it is the price that a property will fetch at a well-advertised auction. Factors that come into consideration are location, age, condition, quality, size and desirability. Auctions are the last niche of the free enterprise system where the laws of supply and demand prevail.
