Advances in Mass Appraisal Methods

This book takes a cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural look at mass appraisal expertise for property valuation in different market conditions, and offers some cutting- edge approaches. The editors establish an international platform and present the scientific debate as well as practical feasibility considerations. Heretic and orthodox valuation methods are assessed based on specific criteria, partly technical and partly institutional. Methodological evaluation is approached using two types of criteria: operational concerns about how to determine property value differentials between spatial and functional units of real estate in a valid and reliable way (technical criteria); and the kind of market circumstances being operated in (institutional criteria). While technical criteria are relatively well-researched, there is little theoretically informed work on the connection between country context and selection of property appraisal methods. The book starts with an examination of current mass property appraisal practices, presenting case studies from widely differing markets - from the American and Dutch, where regression-based methods have been used successfully for some time; to the Eastern European and other emerging economies, where limitations have to be compensated by focusing on the modelling assumptions. The second part of the book looks at sophisticated modelling approaches, some of which represent combinations of elements from two or more techniques. Whatever the exact modelling approach, the requirements are always high for the quality of the data and suitability of the method. In the final section, methods are evaluated and compared according to technical criteria and against institutional contexts.With its exceptionally wide coverage of valuation issues, Mass Appraisal Methods: an international perspective for property valuers addresses property valuation problems common to different countries and approaches applicable in both developed and emerging economies.

Table of Contents:
Contributors. Foreword. Preface. Abbreviations. 1 Introduction: Suitability Issues in Mass Appraisal Methodology (Tom Kauko and Maurizio d'Amato). PART I MASS APPRAISAL PRACTICE AND RECOMMENDATIONS. 2 Data Issues Involved with the Application of Automated Valuation Methods: A Case Study (John F. Thompson, Jr). 3 The Modified Comparable Sales Method as the Basis for a Property Tax Valuations System and its Relationship and Comparison to Spatially Autoregressive Valuation Models (Richard A. Borst and William J. McCluskey). 4 Automated Valuation in the Dutch Housing Market: The Web-Application 'MarktPositie' Used by NVM-Realtors (Dree Op 't Veld, Emma Bijlsma and Paulien van de Hoef). 5 Using Fuzzy Numbers in Mass Appraisal: The Case of the Belarusian Property Market (Maurizio d'Amato and Nikolai Siniak). PART II CURRENT ADVANCED METHODS. 6 Mass Appraisal, Hedonic Price Modelling and Urban Externalities: Understanding Property Value Shaping Processes (Francois Des Rosiers and Marius Theriault). 7 Residuals Analysis for Constructing 'More Real' Property Value (Malgorzata Renigier). 8 The Hierarchical Trend Model (Marc K. Francke). PART III EMERGING METHODS. 9 Developing Mass Appraisal Models with Fuzzy Systems (Marco Aurelio Stumpf Gonzalez). 10 Utterly Unorthodox Modelling for the Purposes of Mass Appraisal: An Approach Based on Patterns and Judgments (Tom Kauko). 11 Rough Set Theory as Property Valuation Methodology: The Whole Story (Maurizio d'Amato). PART IV COMPARISON OF TOOLS USING A SET OF SPECIFIC CRITERIA. 12 Technical Comparison of the Methods Including Formal Testing of Accuracy and Other Modelling Performance Using Own Data Sets and Multiple Regression Analysis (Richard A. Borst, Francois Des Rosiers, Malgorzata Renigier, Marco Aurelio Stumpf Gonzalez, Tom Kauko and Maurizio d'Amato). 13 Property Market Classification and Mass Appraisal Methodology (Maurizio d'Amato and Tom Kauko). PART V CONCLUSION. 14 Automated Valuation Methods, Empirical Modelling of Value, and Systems for Market Analysis (Tom Kauko). Glossary. Index.

About the Author :
Tom Kauko, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. Maurizio d'Amato, Technical Univerisity Politecnico di Bari, Italy.

Review :
Complaints about the scholarly book market being saturated by "companions" should be quickly dispelled by this valuable collection of essays by some of the top scholars in the field. Castro-Klaren (Johns Hopkins Univ.) has put together a rich collection of 38 essays that propose new ways to understand how the literature and culture of Latin America (including Brazil and the Caribbean) interact now and more importantly how they interacted in the past. Particularly valuable is the volume's focus on crucial shifts now occurring in the perception of Latin American culture, society, and subjects--and specifically the way colonial studies shed light on periods other than the colonial period itself. In this sense, one can almost read Walter Mignolo's useful "Preamble: The Historical Foundation of Modernity/Coloniality and the Emergence of Decolonial Thinking," one of the most provoking and profitable contributions of this volume," as programmatic; he proposes extending the study of the colonial matrix into considerations of modernity and documents the transition "from the city of letters to the city of signs." In short, this is a fascinating panoply that goes from a reevaluation of pre-Columbian America to an intriguing consideration of recent developments in the debate on the modern and postmodern. Summing Up : Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. -- G. Gomez-Ocampo, Wabash College ( Choice, February 2009)