Suchergebnisse

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses our work on residential real estate valuations. Real estate valuations, which encompass appraisals and other value estimation methods, play a critical role in mortgage underwriting by providing evidence that the market value of a property is sufficient to help mitigate losses if the borrower is unable to repay the loan. However, recent turmoil in the mortgage market has raised questions about mortgage underwriting practices, including the quality and credibility of some valuations. An investigation into industry appraisal practices by the New York State Attorney General led to an agreement in 2008 between the Attorney General; Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the enterprises); and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which regulates the enterprises. This agreement included the Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC), which set forth certain appraiser independence requirements for loans sold to the enterprises and took effect in 2009. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Pub. L. No. 111-203) (the Dodd-Frank Act) directed us to study the effectiveness and impact of various valuation methods and the options available for selecting appraisers, as well as the impact of HVCC. This testimony summarizes the report we are releasing today, which responds to the mandate in the Dodd-Frank Act. Our work focused on valuations of single-family residential properties for first-lien purchase and refinance mortgages. The report discusses (1) the use of different valuation methods and their advantages and disadvantages, (2) policies and other factors that affect consumer appraisal costs and requirements for lenders to disclose appraisal costs and valuation reports to consumers, and (3) conflict-of-interest and appraiser selection policies and views on the impact of these policies on industry stakeholders and appraisal quality. We consider the impact of HVCC throughout the report."

"Residential Property Appraisal, Volume 1 and 2 is a handbook not only for students studying surveying but also for surveyors and others involved in the appraisal of residential property"--

Sustainability issues in residential buildings in many cities of the world and the search for factors that influence the level of maintenance of residential buildings, with appropriate measures to assist in the solutions to the problems of building maintenance has been an issue of concern, most especially to the house designers and developers in Niger State, Nigeria. This paper therefore planned to determine factors that influence the level of maintenance of residential buildings' standards. The research method employed was descriptive and inferential survey. The data collected were subjected to uni-variate analysis and multi-variate analysis, using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The study found among others that factors that influence the level of maintenance of residential buildings standards includes, (i) building's state of repair, (ii) building type and (iii) Owners/Occupiers highest level of education. The paper concludes that for any meaningful approach to maintainability of residential buildings in view of adequate provision of descent accommodation for the populace, the state Government need to embark on public enlightenment campaign for the residential buildings' owners/occupants on the need for residential buildings and building premises maintenance and the implication for failure to maintain buildings and buildings' premises regularly. Keywords: Appraisal, building standards, maintenance, residential building, sustainability.

Introduces the theory of artificial neural networks (ANN).
Discusses its application to the valuation of residential apartments.
Compares the performance of the back propagation neural network (BP)
model in estimating sale prices of apartments against the traditional
multiple regression analysis (MRA) model. Concludes that the neural
network model is an easy‐to‐use, black‐box alternative to the MRA model.

Ageing-in-place policies have been implemented by many Western governments in order to delay and decrease the reliance on expensive institutionalised care. While such policies, as well as a large body of research, support the idea that ageing-in-place contributes to the wellbeing of older adults, ageing-in-place also has its downsides. Health problems and physical limitations can pose hazards within residential environments, such as falling or house fires. One way of dealing with incongruences between older persons and their housing situation is the physical adaptation of the residential environment; either through home modifications or relocation. The Dutch government wants older adults to anticipate on incongruences in the residential environment by making timely changes in order to prevent incidents from happening. However, insight is lacking in older adults' awareness and perception of such modifications as a strategy to age safely in place and how they view 'timeliness' in this respect. The objective of this paper is to understand Dutch older home owners' appraisal of residential environmental modifications. The results of this research are based on a survey and semi-structured interviews with nine older home owners (aged 55 and above). We use Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour as an interpretative framework for the analysis of the results. The insights provided by this study can provide input for policy makers and professionals in designing interventions to raise awareness amongst older adults about the possibilities for and benefits of timely residential environmental modifications.

The vast bulk of households, especially those in an informal settlement, live in jammed conditions, surrounded by substandard houses, sometimes located in areas prone to various hazards which do not offer satisfactory resistances against diseases. The home is the elementary requirement to a better health delivery system not the hospital (WHO, 1999). Basically, only 25% to 30% Nigerians, usually top government officials and prosperous or fortunate individuals enjoy a decent resident (Azzan et al 2005). Aim of this article will be accomplished through the following objectives: to examine the contemporary practices of the urban residential property market in Nigeria; to scrutinize activities of the informal sector in the urban residential property market in Nigeria; and to evaluate the nemesis of the activities of the informal sector in the urban residential property market in Nigeria. Appraisal of relevant texts established that informal housing have flooded or seem to outnumber the formal and or planned housing in the residential property markets in Nigeria (Chirisa, 2008; Gerber, 2007). Legitimacy of the informal housing seems to be no longer an issue. Regrettably, the terrible and dreadful environmental situations related to informal sector activities create a chief threat to the well-being of residents' lives. The faults of government planning controls, and the unsystematic housing developments coupled with the informal sector activities have generated chaotic and unsafe urban environments. Finally, residential units built informally collapses frequently, claim innocent lives and discard wealth (Chirisa, 2008; Gerber, 2007). Informal sector housing, particularly those for residential purposes cause real hazards for the urban people who don't have enough money for medicine.

Hybrid systems as the next generation of intelligent applications within the field of mass appraisal and valuation are investigated. Motivated by the obvious limitations of paradigms that are being used in isolation or as stand‐alone techniques such as multiple regression analysis, artificial neural networks and expert systems. Clearly, there are distinct advantages in integrating two or more information processing systems that would address some of the discrete problems of individual techniques. Examines first, the strategic development of mass appraisal approaches which have traditionally been based on "stand‐alone" techniques; second, the potential application of an intelligent hybrid system. Highlights possible solutions by investigating various hybrid systems that may be developed incorporating a nearest neighbour algorithm (k‐NN). The enhancements are aimed at two major deficiencies in traditional distance metrics; user dependence for attribute weights and biases in the distance metric towards matching categorical variables in the retrieval of neighbours. Solutions include statistical techniques: mean, coefficient of variation and significant mean. Data mining paradigms based on a loosely coupled neural network or alternatively a tight coupling with genetic algorithms are used to discover attribute weights. The hybrid architectures developed are applied to a property data set and their performance measured based on their predictive value as well as perspicuity. Concludes by considering the application and the relevance of these techniques within the field of computer assisted mass appraisal.

ObjectivesResidential property tax protests have drawn public debate, but relatively little is known about who protests, the outcomes of protests, and consistency among local review boards. This study examines these topics among 171,228 homeowners of Tarrant County, Texas who filed a protest between 2001 and 2009.MethodsUsing data from an appraisal district in Texas, this study examines market differences, housing types, and appraisal board outcomes over time to assess the degree to which market predictors contribute to differences in protest rates and outcomes in 40 municipalities.ResultsProtest rates tend to change little over time and hold within a narrow range. A small percentage of protests conclude with a full hearing; decisions tend to favor protestors.ConclusionsContrary to public opinion, protests are not surging. For protestors, market value within their communities emerges as a better predictor of filing a protest than simply market value of individual properties.