Typically, appraisers are engaged by a diverse range of clients to provide a professional opinion or consultative valuation services on the quality, value, or utility of a specific property. Appraisals may be required for just about any type of property, including single-family homes, apartment buildings and condominiums, office buildings, shopping centers, hotels, industrial sites, and farms, whenever real estate is sold, mortgaged, taxed, insured, or developed.

The reasons for performing a real property appraisal are varied. Clients typically seek out a professional appraiser for an opinion on:

• current value of property being bought or sold
• future value of property being built
• value for mortgage or lending purposes
• value to assist in investment decisions
• value to measure property tax assessments and other taxes
• verification of damage claims resulting from fire, rain, hail, windstorms and other disasters
• value of property to determine compensation where property is to be expropriated
• value of property involved in litigation
• value of private property acquired by governments for public use
• value of property as it affects pending business mergers or dissolution

In addition, there is an increasing demand for feasibility studies and consultative services offered by valuation professionals. In recent years, the real estate industry has experienced significant and ongoing changes. Today’s professional real property appraisers are highly qualified and better able to serve the expanding needs of the marketplace with a wide range of value-added real property advisory, and consulting services. For example, arbitration, expert testimony, cost-benefit studies, asset/portfolio management, due diligence, business valuation, property management and tax assessment appeals are among the value added services now offered by AIC members, serving an increasingly broad base of public and private sector clients. 

May 25, 2011