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The real estate assessor’s valuation · Family Law Talk

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Family Law Talk.
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  Speaker 2: Family Law Talk.
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  Speaker 1: Presented by Kirk Stangy of Stangy Law Firm PC. Stangy
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  Law Firm is a multi state family law firm. Now
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  here's your host, Kirk Stangy.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to Family Law Talk. We have an interesting topic today.
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  The topic is the real estate assessors valuation and this
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  episode today is based on an article on our blog
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  Familylawheadquarters dot com day to June eighth, twenty twenty five
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  and the title of the article is is the real
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  estate assessor's value accurate? So it as a follow up
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  to the episode today, going over to Familawheadquarters dot com
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  and read this article on this topic from more information,
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  but let's go ahead and jump on in. And a
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  lot of dissolutions of marriage, the value of the marital
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  home is often a significant issue for some individuals who
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  are going through a divorce. The marital home may be
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  the most valuable asset out there, and so to resolve
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  a divorce, the parties are going to have to either
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  agree on a value of the marital home or the
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  court's going to have to decide what the marital home
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  is worth. And that's really the only way marital property
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  and debt can be divided, which is dividing marital property
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  and debt in a just manner. But to do that,
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  you've got to know the value of all the assets,
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  and that includes the marital home. Obviously, in some cases,
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  it can be more complicated when parties own more real
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  property than just the marital home, like maybe they have
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  a vacation home, or maybe they have rental property or
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  commercial property, and certainly in those circumstances, all of those
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  properties would need to be evaluated as well. Okay, but
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  one of the big questions lots of individuals have when
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  going through divorce and trying to figure out how to
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  divide property and debt is whether or not the real
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  estate assessor's valuation is acurate or not. In other words,
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  will the court rely on that valuation or can we
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  rely on that valuation for settlement purposes? Can we introduce
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  that valuation into court? And sometimes parties look at the
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  real estate assessor's valuation and all candor and they think
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  it's way off base. A lot of cases, parties might
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  think the real estate assessors valuation is way high, so
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  they're making the property worth way more than it ought
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  to be worth. In some circumstances, one or both parties
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  could think the opposite. They might think the assessor's valuation
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  is really low. So maybe the assessor thinks the value
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  of the property is a certain amount, but the party
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  disputes it. They don't think it's accurate or not okay,
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  And so this is very common in divorce cases. Parties
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  looking at the assessor's value and neither thinking it's way
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  too high or it's way too low, and they want
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  to know what to do, and they want to know
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  whether the assessor's valuation is accurate or is it no accurate,
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  And so that's the topic here today. Obviously, every case
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  is different. The circumstances regarding the real estate assessor valuating
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  certain property is going to be a little bit different.
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  But candidly, there are some things, at least I've seen
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  through the years in representing clients and lots of cases
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  and certainly in dealing with assessors valuations. And one of
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  the big issues is that a lot of assessors do
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  what's called a drive by assessment. Okay, so they might
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  drive by the property, they might observe it from the outside,
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  but oftentimes they don't even go inside the marital home.
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  If the homeowner's not home, they might not even speak
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  to the homeowner, right, so the assessor might not know
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  all kinds of things like what upgrades have been made
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  to this house? What improvements have been made to it?
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  And then on the flip end, if there's repairs that
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  are needed, if there's things in the house that's outdated
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  and maybe need to be updated, like new carpets, new flooring,
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  maybe new AC units, right, maybe new air handlers or
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  new water heaters, of these kinds of things. A lot
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  of parties would be upset and say, look, the real
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  estate assessor didn't even take this stuff into account, and
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  so their valuation doesn't make a whole lot of sense
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  and it ought to not be relied upon. Okay, on
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  the flip end, if one party thinks the assessor's valuation
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  is off base and that it's too low, their argument
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  might be, look, they didn't go inside the house. They
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  didn't see all the improvements that were made inside of it.
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  Maybe there's new water heaters, maybe there's new AC units.
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  You know, maybe new flooring or carpeting was put in,
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  and all these things increased the value, But the assessor
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  didn't even know this stuff as well, so look, adherent
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  in real estate assessors valuations in terms of the critique
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  is the fact that oftentimes they're not even going inside
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  the home and so they don't even know for sure
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  what's been done, what hasn't been done, you know, the
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  areas of the home that need to be improved upon,
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  you know, maybe or even out of code. You know,
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  maybe the homeless bill long ago, and certain setups within
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  the home might be outside of best practices in this
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  day and age, and maybe wouldn't even clear code if
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  somebody went in and expected it, and maybe that could
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  impact the value. Okay, So this is one of the
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  biggest critiques when you get into real estate assessors evaluations.
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  So in a lot of cases, what parties want to
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  do instead of using the real estate assessors valuation is
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  hire a real estate appraiser. Okay, so there's lots of
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  outside real estate appraisers. They can come, they can see
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  the marital home. Typically they're going to come and sign,
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  They're going to walk around the outside of the property
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  inspect that too. Typically, they can ask the homeowner about
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  right the pros and the cons of the property. They
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  can ask about the upgrades that have been made and
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  maybe ask about the items where upgrades haven't been made
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  but they need to be made, and they can then
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  take a better you know, take better data in information
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  order to have a more accurate valuation of the property itself. Okay.
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  Another advantage of having a real estate appraiser come in
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  is that they can actually come into court and they
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  can testify in court. And so in a divorced manner,
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  it's important to not only hire a real estate appraiser
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  if this is an issue in the case, but to
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  hire a real estate appraiser who has experienced testifying in court,
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  because frankly, a lot of real estate appraisers have never
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  done this before, so that would be difficult for them,
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  and maybe some would not even be willing to do
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  that in terms of coming into court. So finding a
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  qualified real estate appraiser who's properly licensed, who's willing to
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  come into court and testify, that's typically the best path.
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  Where parties disagree on the value of the marital home
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  or other property, just hire a real estate appraiser. Candidly,
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  in some cases both parties will have separate appraisals done right.
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  Husband might have one done, wife might have one done.
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  Those appraisals could turn out to be pretty similar or
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  they could turn out to be pretty different, in which case,
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  you know, parties have to decide whether to meet in
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  the middle or to present the case to the court,
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  and then the court has to decide what appraisal they
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  think is more credible or not. Okay, one of the
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  other questions is this, which is sort of interesting, and
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  this is a little bit in the weeds, I should say,
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  out of the gates, but it's this which is will
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  a real estate assessor's valuation? Can it even come into court?
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  So could a lawyer even admit it and present it
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  to the judge? And this is really kind of an
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  interesting question. And again this is in the weeds. But arguably,
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  if the real estate assessor isn't in court, an attorney
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  could argue that it's hearsay, so it's an on a
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  court statement offered for the truth of the matter asserted.
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  They could argue lack of foundation in that nobody came
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  in and testified in terms of the foundation for the valuation,
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  in other words, what facts and data will relied upon.
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  So you know, a savvy lawyer who doesn't want the
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  assessor's valuation coming in for one reason or the other.
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  They think it's too high, or they think it's too low.
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  If they don't want it in, they're going to object
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  and say that it shouldn't come in, and from my
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  experience in a lot of instances, it's not going to
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  come in. And then again not to get too too
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  much into the weeds. An attorney if they want to
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  admit it and the other side's objecting for here's say,
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  lack of foundation, maybe some other reasons than an attorney
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  who once to admit it might argue, wait a minute,
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  there's an exception for printouts from government web pages. This
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  is a printout from a government web page. I think
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  I can admit it on those grounds. Maybe that works.
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  Maybe that doesn't work because it has opinion based testimony
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  contained within it. It's not just data, and so this
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  is real murky too. So the reality is, unless the
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  other sign's going to consent to the admission of the
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  real estate assessor's valuation, I don't think a party or
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  an attorney can necessarily rely on the fact that this
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  is going to be admissible in court of the other
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  signs likely to object. Okay, another interesting situation that I've
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  seen a lot of cases is people looking at online
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  web page valuations. So I know one of the big
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  web pages is Zillo. You know, most parties can go
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  to Zilo, type in their address. It'll have an approximate
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  value for property, and it'll have some property history in
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  terms of what it's sold for and when it lasts
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  sold to these kinds of things. And again the question
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  here is is that accurate or not? Again, the problem
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  is Zilo didn't go on the homes. Zillo didn't inspect
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  the homes. Zillo's doing approximations based on sales that have
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  been made in the area, presumably the size of the home,
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  the features of these kinds of things. But again, Zillo,
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  whether it's accurate or not, I think a lot of
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  people would say not so accurate. And then you get
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  into an issue of can you admit a Zillo valuation
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  in court or some similar web page And the answer
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  is probably not unless the other side is going to consent. Again,
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  you're going to get hear Saale Foundation objections and this
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  is not a government web page, so you can't argue
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  that exception to get it admitted. So you know, if
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  a party is saying I don't want to do a
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  real estate appraisal. I just want to get Zillo admitted
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  to court. That might be easier said than done because
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  of these evidentiary hurdles I've already mentioned. So listen, for
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  most cases, okay, where parties disagree on the value of
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  the marital home and this is a big, big issue
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  in the case, okay, and it's not going to be reconcilable.
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  Parties aren't going to be able to meet in the
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  middle or something like this, And most instances, what's advisable
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  is to get a real estate appraiser who's license and
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  who has experienced testifying in court to come and valuate
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  the home. That's almost always the best practice, that's the
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  best path. Some parties might be resistant because I don't
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  want to pay for real estate appraisal, but if this
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  is a big issue of the case, this is almost
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  always the path that a party has to undertake. Real
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  estate is users in zill valuations maybe not that reliable
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  and hard to get admitted into court. Okay. So that's
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  the episode today. Definitely an interesting topic and one I
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  wanted to cover. Is a follow up to the episode today,
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  going over to our blog Famielawheadquarters dot com read the
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  article day to June twenty twenty five titled is the
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  real estate Assessor's value Accurate? This will give you more
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  information on this topic. But thanks for tuning in today.
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  Stay tuned our next episode of Family Law Talk coming up.
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  Thank you very much.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Family Law Talk with Kirk Stangy.
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