Thomas Holding
Junior Member
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2004
- Professional Status
- Certified General Appraiser
- State
- North Carolina
I have a brand new open pit rock quarry it is just opened up next to my very nice home. They are blasting at least once a week and it shakes the whole house! There a rock crusher runs five days a week 10 hours a day or more. The dust from the plant crushing the rock, from the trucks coming in and out of the plant, and moving new dirt making room for more rock storage. I’m on a total of approximately 100 acres. My home is Approximately 2000 feet from the blasting. One of my rental homes is approximately 900 feet from the blasting.
It sounds like your property suffers from what is called external obsolescence. In simple terms, external obsolescence is a factor that reduces the value of an improvement because of something external to the property itself. It's not about whether the house is outdated or not, but rather something outside of the home that is causing a lower value. It's usually something that cannot be cured. Determining what effect the continuing operations of the quarry might have on your property is dependent on the market reaction to all of the detrimental factors that you mentioned plus others that you might not be aware of. Appraising properties with this condition are very challenging for even very experienced appraisers due to the complexities involved and the relative scarcity of information available to analyze.
Questions you might ask yourself are, can you rent either home, and how much would you have to discount the rents relative to other similar houses in your market in order to attract a tenant.