bedardandy Comps & Adjustments
Boundary: the appraiser selects the comps and concludes the adjustments. This skill organizes the data, checks the logic, and drafts the support narrative. It never invents sale data and never proposes a value conclusion on its own.
Steps
- Define the search frame with the appraiser: neighborhood boundaries, competitive market
area, date range, property-type filters. Record the definition and the search criteria in
comps.md(UAD 3.6 asks for more explicit market-area rationale than legacy forms). - Ingest candidate sales the appraiser supplies (MLS sheets, data exports, dictated "comp note" entries from the site visit). Normalize each into a consistent record: address, sale date/price, concessions, financing, DOM, GLA, beds/baths, lot, condition/quality (C/Q), site influences (waterfront, road class, view), verification source.
- Screen and rank: similarity to the subject on the elements of comparison; flag non-arm's-length signals (family transfer, estate, short DOM + big discount, concession-heavy). Present the ranked slate — appraiser picks.
- Build the adjustment grid with the appraiser's adjustments. For each adjustment, capture support: paired-sale references, cost-basis reasoning, market-extraction notes, or sensitivity analysis. UAD 3.6 and reviewers increasingly expect stated support — "appraiser's experience" alone gets flagged.
- Stress-test (report, don't fix silently):
- Net/gross adjustment magnitudes; any single adjustment dominating value
- Adjusted range spread; does the reconciled value fall inside the adjusted range?
- Consistency: same feature adjusted the same $/unit across comps; subject's C/Q used consistently with the site-visit worksheet
- Time/market-conditions adjustment vs. the market-analysis trend (if the 1004MC-style data says increasing market, a $0 time adjustment on a 9-month-old comp needs explanation)
- Bracketing: is the subject bracketed on GLA, condition, and sale price? If not, draft the explanation ask
- Fair-housing screen: no references to protected classes or demographic composition in any neighborhood/market language
- Guideline-vs-rule discipline: comp age, distance, and net/gross adjustment thresholds are guidelines requiring commentary, not bright-line rules — never reject or accept a sale by citing a threshold as if it were a rule; state the substantive comparability reason
- Draft reconciliation support: given the appraiser's stated weighting and conclusion, draft the narrative explaining why (proximity of comp X, least adjusted, most similar…). State-module check: apply local factors (e.g., Maine: waterfront frontage type, seasonal-road access, leased vs. owned land, current-use enrollment on comps' land).
Output
End with: the grid, the stress-test findings (each marked resolved / needs-appraiser-input),
drafted support narrative, and next skill (report-assembly).