Retrospective Appraisal - Pre MLS

[Terrel L. Shields]

I have MLS books back to around 1980

My books go back to 1991

 

[John Hassler]

My books go back to 1991

You kids today don't know how hard we had it.

The worst part was Comp Books only came out quarterly as in four times per year. Fortunately, pop's had a broker friend who would give us his week-old weekly books that would have a one-line list of sales since the last Comp Book. Lot's of phone calls and trips to the recorders office back then.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

he worst part was Comp Books only came out quarterly

Yep, $15 a quarter. And NWA had 3 separate books, and then they merged into one, and then we had a DOS online MLS and a 4th Board came out with a really good program called RISCO and the other 3 boards combined under another vendor that sucked putty balls. And finally the small board capitulated and all 4 boards joined and went thru about 5 different MLSs before settling on one. Meanwhile, NE OK board finally picked FlexMLS which is kinda OK.

 

[RCA]

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.

Contact the MLS. Often they have old book listings that you can go through in their office. Sometimes photographs of old book listings -- you can pull up on some kind of viewer.

 

[Tom D]

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.

Tell dem old appraiser you will take those old MLS books to the recycle dump and save him the trip and hard work, for free. The recycle dump being your basement.

5 MLS books, figured out to trade for the county books with my 2 city books. But in those day the typical dom here was 6 months or more anyway.

What a ton of paper keeping those appraisal hard copies for 7 years.

 

[sputnam]

It's likely that the MLS system has older archives. They simply are not online and available to you that way. You will need to contact the MLS/Board of Realtors to get access to the data... and you may have to pay for it.

 

[KHS445]

Depending on the Governmental unit that records deeds, mortgages, etc. for the area in question, you may be able to run a search using date, address, tax ID#, plat, etc. parameters. I use the local County Register of Deeds computers to run various searches when looking for private sales, memorandums of land contracts, seller financing, etc. Another area might be the local Government GIS system tax parcel overlay where you can click on various parcels of property and see a sale history. While it may not give you all the information you are seeking, you would at least have a place to start.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

Depending on the Governmental unit that records deeds, mortgages, etc. for the area in question, you may be able to run a search using date, address, tax ID#, plat, etc. parameters. I use the local County Register of Deeds computers to run various searches when looking for private sales, memorandums of land contracts, seller financing, etc. Another area might be the local Government GIS system tax parcel overlay where you can click on various parcels of property and see a sale history. While it may not give you all the information you are seeking, you would at least have a place to start.

actually I can reconstruction the sales from the sales history of the assessor plus I can pull up the mortgages. A mortgage has FNMA or FHA listed at the bottom of the form, or a VA checkbox when VA. You can also see who the bank originating the loan is, if there is a second, and taking that address, you may find it was listed recently or even sold. Just Google the address.

 

[jay trotta]

MLS is only one part of the solution, you also need to be able to get field card info from that timeline, without that your dead in the water.
All the best

 

[J Grant]

Imo, If there is not enouigh quality information and sufficient data for credible results, then decline the assignment. It is just one assignment, one fee -but if the results are bad it can bite you -