Retrospective Appraisal - Pre MLS

[JoseMiguel72]

Hello everyone. I just received a request for a retrospective value for July 1st, 1994. The property is located in Landers which is unincorporated San Bernardino county in California. The oldest sales that show up on my MLS are from 2002.

How does one go about researching the sales for a situation like this? Legend has it that once upon a time there were these things called MLS books but I don't know where to even begin looking for those. Going to the county assessor seems like it might be another route but I can already see the civil servants perplexed look when I ask about sales from 30 years ago! LOL

Any help would be appreciated...thanks in advance.

 

[Dublin ohio]

Hello everyone. I just received a request for a retrospective value for July 1st, 1994. The property is located in Landers which is unincorporated San Bernardino county in California. The oldest sales that show up on my MLS are from 2002.

How does one go about researching the sales for a situation like this? Legend has it that once upon a time there were these things called MLS books but I don't know where to even begin looking for those. Going to the county assessor seems like it might be another route but I can already see the civil servants perplexed look when I ask about sales from 30 years ago! LOL

Any help would be appreciated...thanks in advance.

Did you try contacting your local board and see if they have any archives. How far back does the county go with on line records. Many of my counties have on line records that go back to pre internet

 

[CGinMN]

You might be able to get the old MLS books from your local MLS. If not they may know where to get them. The county may also be able to run a search if they digitized their records back then. Some counties started digitizing their records in the 90s.

Charge hourly if you can. If you can’t, then I would want to find out the availability of data before I quoted a fee. That is probably going to be the most time consuming part.

Don’t use a 1004. Do narrative if you can, or maybe a GPAR.

Good luck, Landers looks like it could be difficult.

 

[Flakey]

Try manually entering the dates in MLS. Recently, I did one for an estate and our MLS only went back 10 years on the selection bar, but when I entered the date manually it went back 15 years. Don't know if it went further back. Our MLS person did not know that.

 

[Tom D]

Search in public record for that year, then look for the most oldest listing of that comp. If the comp is in avg condition, then you could assume the same condition in 1994.

Problem is spending the time to finally realize you can't do it. A lot of tax assessments are accurate, what was it assessed for then. Not an appraisal, but a government value, or additional support for your best guess.

 

[RustyTapeMeasure]

Do not use the Integratron property as a comp, imo. The adjustments for Giant Rock and Sound Acoustics in the 38ft cupola structure might be a stretch. FYI, in seriousness it is highly unlikely you are able to find an OG agent who is extremely obsessive in that area that has an entire 2-3 car garage filled up with quarterly ( or other) sales/listing books from the 80's and 90's for which they would have had likely nearly ZERO use for it since stored at great cost of usable space for better junk or cars, etc. Where are you coming from? San Dimas, North SD country, guessing not from JT, Rimrock, Coachella Valley. So ? you might not even have current local good expertise in the area, therefore far less trying to establish viable supportable value in the 90's with some complex issues of utilities to site, geography of various parcels, etc. If you feel this analysis will not be under heavy scrutiny for its opinion purposes you could use closed records for a time frame of 9 months before and after said retrospective date as the values in that depressed Southern California pricing time frame were down and did not move much. Expand area as needed, which you will because Landers in 90's was CHEAP, even with an improvement on the lot. If you have all the data available, discuss said limitations of it and no one else can find or prove better data, you will likely be fine. Discuss your entire data set of found sales, those ranges and your ultimate on how to range in the subject versus them. No one can refute your findings if you have everything and more then anyone else can acquire.

 

[Alsie35]

Why would you take such an assignment? Or are you just "brainstorming" before deciding?

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

Why would you take such an assignment? Or are you just "brainstorming" before deciding?

I am doing one from 1989... No step for a stepper. Fee is righteous.

 

[Elliott]

I once did a dissolution appraisal that required a '86 valuation, a '96 valuation, and a 2010 valuation. Fortunately, I had done appraisals from each of the 'periods' and could reference comparables......but I correlated values with Case-Shiller trends. So my suggestion is to peg a value to 'what you know' and follow state or national trends.

 

[John Hassler]

I am doing one from 1989... No step for a stepper. Fee is righteous.

You get all the easy ones. I have MLS books back to around 1980 thanks to pops

I've only had to go back to 1974 for a divorce case (5 dates/values). No doubt others have gone back farther. The local MLS let me go through their saved books. I do remember all the sales were between $35-$40,000.

To the OP, if MLS can't help you out consider contacting some of the older appraisers in your area and offer them a cut of the fee if they can assist in providing data. Great assignment, enjoy!