Tired of flipping pages in the Marshall & Swift Handbook

[NachoPerito]

We have used the Marshall & Swift handbook for years to estimate cost for commercial buildings. Does anyone go beyond that and use their digital products and find it worth it? I am waiting for them to enter the 21st century. Core Logic bought them last year, which I was hoping was going to modernize cost estimating.

I think cost as a method or test of reasonableness could be used more often if there was a streamlined program. The data used in the cost approach is pretty much already in your report. It just needs to be sorted.

 

[Michael S]

I've used SwiftEstimator on a couple of projects in the last year. Price wise it's reasonable, but there's definitely a learning curve.

I appraised a newer food processing facility (around 80,000 SF) that had a very large freezer and the majority of the production area was cooler to about 40 degrees. In addition there were a few older metal and CMU industrial buildings. I spent probably 2-3 days just working on that cost approach using the breakdown method. Had I stuck with the book I probably would have come within 10 -15% but I would not have felt very confident given that I was primarily relying on the cost approach. Luckily I had full CAD drawings so I could calculate exactly how many square feet of wall, floor, ceiling, etc. was in a particular area as there were so many different section of the main building and all of the ancillary buildings. Total cost was $198.00 but it was well worth it.

I used the calculator method for an autoplex recently. It had four dealership buildings, a body shop, and an office building. The cost is $22 per building section (i.e. auto dealership) and I used an additional one to account for all of the site improvements. Once again, I could have used to book but I felt a little more confident in SwiftEstimator as it let me get a lot more detailed. I especially liked being able to break down the depreciation by building because I had a newer building built in 2007 and some older ones built in the 1980's.

 

[JTip]

$100 for a searchable pdf cd on top of the annual fee.

Monthly disc for commercial, quarterly for residential.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

When Boeckh was bought out by M & S, the reasonably priced agricultural book became unaffordable. The digital products are insanely priced. I use R S Means for valuing commercial buildings now. yeah, it's a book but at least it doesn't take 3 invoices to pay for it.

 

[Gregory Beck]

I don't do the cost approach unless it is specified in the lender instructions. I know see most of the time the lender only wants the site value and remaining economic life.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

I don't do the cost approach unless it is specified in the lender instructions. I know see most of the time the lender only wants the site value and remaining economic life.

I can't think of an Ag appraiser who does not do the cost approach on every assignment. In fact, the FSA people in Oklahoma even advocate the CA for bare land...They claim that the CA is applicable in segregating land by classes, then applying the particular value to the acreages in each class - the old Land Summation method as I call it, and they equate Summation with Cost (which in the old days the CA was sometimes called the Summation method.)