The New USPAP

[Surf Cat]

Hey Mars man....Fernando does his analysis of the neighborhoods he appraises by instinct...by feel...

 

[RCA]

Hey Mars man....Fernando does his analysis of the neighborhoods he appraises by instinct...by feel...

That is his only choice besides linear regression - and that doesn't work in this area. And I can assure you it is what the vast majority of appraisers around here use - because they simply cannot do any better. So I assure you, I have been appraising in this are since 2001 - and I know what the lay of the land is at least in that respect.

It would be nice to know otherwise - but I haven't come across anything. There is also no indication from other appraisers who use R that they have advanced to that point.

I have been using MARS in this are since 2004, in 17 different counties in Northern California, from Mendocino County to the Sierras, down to Merced Count and over to Monterey County (one of my favorite).

Learning how to run MARS is relatively easy if you have Salford Systems MARS - which I did have for many years. But it now costs $16K/year for a license. So all that is left really is R/earth -- and that is more difficult to use. But even more difficult is learning how it inter-plays with real estate data, recognizing overfitting and how to interpret and deal with models and then transcribe earth model output into adjustments. Then there is the overlaying method of RCA (Residual Constraint Approach) .. and more R coding. It is hard to imagine many appraisers using it, - even those I know who are good at using R and the more traditional parametric statistical methods.