Once again; All this talk of mechanical and fixed approaches is all wrong.
You apply the adjustments according to the scenario.
If the comps carry higher degrees of variance for age weathering or regentrification, you can support a conservative age and condition adjustment at the same time. Helps populate the grid and provide balanced results that take into account all potential factors of buyer consideration.
If condition is uniform, age is still applied nominally to recognize there is some difference of note.
If condition is absurdly varied for damage or rare market examples, sometimes the emphasis on cost to cure breakdown, and quality of condition is what drives the market reactions and age considerations are essentially nill because they're swallowed up in the greater consideration of extensive repair. Adding A/EA analysis over damage can create unnecessary valuation analysis and potentially confusing approaches because you don't want to double dip the same market adjustment or run a backwards time adjustment against the age current, based on condition alone. Two put that simply, it's best to perform two values. One is A/EA (similar to A), representing dated and damaged. The second is A/EA (EA always current and improved), representing regentrified examples. When you try to apply sensible A/(&)EA adjustments for damaged vs new, you're going to run into complex double dipping considerations when you also consider costs to cure and condition influence adjustments.
When one considers a purchase of newer homes, of similar character, age can be a factor to focus on, because there is not much else to focus on in newer, uniform housing. Buyers seek out those focus factors to pinpoint pricing approaches a little more confidently.
When one considers a purchase of a damaged home, age plays a reduced or nill consideration compared to the as repaired and as damaged market, so there are two analysis approaches necessary there. Typically, a statement that age is given nominal consideration due to the steep emphasis on condition is acceptable. You tie it all nice together by providing as is value and as repaired to a defined market standard value. That variance is the base condition adjustment as prescribed by market examples. That variance is the investor margin where investors see if there is 20% or so leeway there for costs to cure set against repaired market value.
When you're doing an REO, you reverse the process and provide recommend listing 'values' with detailed breakdown of cost to cure, and to consider investor incentive as a cost to market, additional cost to cure, or deduction against value, if the home demands a general contractor scale effort to prevent it from become a scrape in the near future. The market does not work by itself, it takes participants. Age does not stand alone. Age hangs it's hat on condition. Condition hangs it's hat on time from initial build, set against, commonality of regentrification in the market ie market standards.
