You and I are apparently using different definitions of Market Value. You appear to be using the “willing buyer / willing seller as demonstrated by the sales contract” version, which is typical of the way most realty agents define value. There’s nothing wrong with that considering the role of a realty agent. You only need to find that one special buyer who can be sold on the merits of this very special property. Whether or not that special buyer (or seller) is making a mistake is not your problem.
My role is different, and so is the definition of value that I’m using. The definition I’m using is “typical buyer / typical seller, no undue motivations” and as demonstrated by the predominant trend. I specifically don’t care about your special buyer and as far as I’m concerned there is no such thing as a “very special property”.
I never make the mistake of confusing the two perspectives, and neither should you.
If you can demonstrate (using actual sales data) how the market in this neighborhood is INCREASING right now then it might be okay to dismiss as irrelevant the 4 and 5 month old sales in the subject’s immediate neighborhood. If not…..
Now I’ll concede that maybe our subject really is better than everything else in its neighborhood and maybe using those three sales would involve accounting for their inferiority to this property, thus resulting in a higher “most probable price” opinion. Who knows, maybe those differences would warrant $75k in aggregate upward adjustments. I’d have to see those differences first, though. In lieu of information to the contrary I’m trying to keep my assumptions to a minimum. More assumptions = more margin for error.
