New Orleans Historic Home Appraisals

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Appraisal of historic homes and landmark homes is not like appraising ordinary properties. For one thing, recent comparable sales (recent sales of similar homes in the same neighborhood) may be scarce or non-existent. Imagine a historic home in a rural area, for instance. There are historic districts that can help provide some comparables, if there is enough sales turnover, but not all the properties in those areas are historic homes, or truly comparable. The unique features of some historic and landmark houses make comparison even more difficult. Not just architectural features, either - what if a famous historical person lived in the home, and there are plaques on the lawn, etc? There's rarely such a thing as a "generic" historical home. Imagine trying to set a value for Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch. What would you compare it to, exactly?

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Historic homes, in fact, bring with them a need for experience appraising high value homes in general, rural homes, and other unique properties, in addition to particularly historic ones. As with rural properties in general, appraisals of unique homes make it common for appraisers to rely on extensive home sales records and to need to make extensive notations in the addenda of appraisal reports explaining the methods of valuing the home. An appraisal report is an opinion of value, but it's not as precise as writing a check. To be as accurate, therefore, as possible in the case of historic home, the appraiser relies on more extensive research, documentation, and outright thoughtfulness and analysis in the process of building the report. In the case of normal houses, comparables must generally be no more than 6-months old (and generally the more recent, the better), and as close in size, age, and architectural amenities to the home being valued as possible. With historic homes, an appraiser might find himself comparing a Romanesque to a Gothic, with even more significant differences, if it's otherwise the most similar available comparable.

This doesn't mean the appraiser's job is impossible. Far from it. We appraise historic homes continually. It does mean, however, that you need an appraiser specially experienced in historic home appraisal and valuation, with an incisive and analytical mind. And the appraiser must be capable of doing creative research, providing superior documentation, and crafting effective comparisons between often dissimilar properties, adjusting for those dissimilarities in the scope of the appraisal.