www.news-leader.com/article/20081130/COLUMNISTS17/81130 -
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Last Visited: 11/30/2008
Greene County Assessor Rick Kessinger says, however, that the average decline doesn't indicate an across-the-board devaluation in every home in a city.
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Yet Kessinger says the situation could change in a short time if someone buys the house and fixes it up.
"Then they have redeemed that house and it's back in a normal situation for the neighborhood," Kessinger says.
And "standard appraisal practices" don't allow appraisers to take into account any undue stimulus influencing either buyer or seller -- such as a foreclosure, Kessinger says.
"The definition of fair market value is when there's a willing buyer, willing seller and a standard amount of exposure to the market," Kessinger says.
And it would be difficult to rely on a statistic that occurs only after a foreclosure affects an area.
If the property is saved, spruced up and sold, what would that do to the average price of homes in that area?
"We probably need to look at it over a whole year, rather than a snapshot," Kessinger says.
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Kessinger agrees.
Kessinger also says he wishes the MultiList Board would release the MultiList selling prices of homes to his office, but the Board won't.
"If they would allow us to use their MultiList sales data in our statistical analysis, it would give us a better picture," he says.
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I wouldn't like the selling price of my house made public, but yet I want the fairest appraisal I can get from Kessinger's office.