Posts Tagged ‘Depreciation’
Real Estate Appraisal – Do It Yourself
For single family homes, there are two basic methods used in real estate appraisal. They are replacement cost analysis, and using comparable sales. A third appraisal method, based on capitalization, is used for income properties, and is covered in another article.
In figuring replacement cost the question is: What would it cost to buy this land and put this house on it? If the land (improved) would cost $40,000, and the house could be built for $150,000, the value indicated would be around $190,000 – if the house is fairly new. If it has used up 10% of its useful life, you can deduct $15,000 for depreciation.
Replacement cost is not really a very useful measurement. It is difficult to say what the land is worth in a city center where none is left for sale, for example, and tough to gauge depreciation. It is used as a secondary method, and for unique homes that can’t be compared easily with others. The primary method of real estate appraisal used for homes is a market analysis using comparable sales.
Real Estate Appraisal 101
To get a good idea of what a home should sell for, you need to compare it to homes that have sold. Find at least three similar homes in the same area that have sold within the last year, preferably within the last six months. This information is available in the county records, or from a real estate agent with access to the MLS (multiple listing service).
Now the confusing part. You start with the selling price of each of your comparables. If your subject home has a second bathroom, and the a comparable doesn’t, you add the value of the bathroom to the sales price of the comparable. If a comparable home has a blacktop driveway, and the subject home doesn’t, you take the value away.
You are rectifying differences, to see what comparable homes would have sold for if they were like yours. So if a comparable sold for $140,000, and a bathroom is worth $15,000 in your area (ask a real estate agent for help with these figures), you ADD $15,000 for the bathroom it doesn’t have. Then you subtract, say $4,000, for the paved driveway it does have. This gives you a comparable sales price of $151,000.
You do this with all differences between the subject home and each comparable. When done, you average the three comparable prices. So if the three comparables have adjusted sales prices of $151,000, 162,000, and 149,000, you add the three figures and divide by three. The indicated value of the home is $154,000.
Of course all appraisal is an inexact science. If you can only find comparables sold over a year ago, you have to estimate appreciation in the area. If one sold with seller financing, you have to decide how this affected the price. For all of it’s flaws, however, for single family homes, this is the most accurate method of real estate appraisal.
Real Estate Asset Management
Purchasing real estate properties entails huge amounts of money which makes real estates substantial assets. Although it may be easy to manage just one or two real estate properties, managing more than that may seem too tedious for most people. This may be one of the reasons why people and companies turn to real estate asset management as a way to handle real estate assets.
The difficulty in handling real estate assets would be the fluctuating market prices and demand for these properties. There are instances that real estate bubbles may dramatically show a drop in prices, deeming the property more or a liability than an asset. Real estate asset management not only handles one’s real estate assets, they may also be a source of relevant information regarding real estate properties and the potential of these properties to earn higher returns in the future.
Real estate asset management offers a structure approach in handling real estate assets considering all the factors that accompanies investing in real estate. It may be described as the systematic process of maintaining and upgrading real estate assets in a cost-effective manner that would work well for the property owners.
A lot of factors are considered when managing real estate assets. One would be the location of the property, the soundness of the existing structures, the cost of maintaining the structure and even the lot appreciation or the structure depreciation. Aside from these, ideal real estate asset management considers property taxes that owners must pay for.
Because of the many facets of real estate asset management, most, if not all asset management firms or asset management advisors use the use of asset management software that cater mainly to the management of one’s real estate assets. Utilizing asset management software is useful because of the amount of data when managing real estate. These data may be used as basis in predicting real estate cost estimates for years to come, maintenance cost through time, and the property’s real estate value which would dictate its appreciation or future resale value.