The question for appraisers and those who seek appraisers' advice is what effect the imposition of an AUL has on a property's value. Appraisers seek answers in the behavior of market participants. A survey of lenders in Greater Boston indicates that, so long as an AUL does not impair the use that produces the property's value, for the most part a lender is as willing to take a property with an AUL as collateral as any other. In the six years since AULs' institution, sufficient sales of limited-use properties have taken place to allow analysis of the effect of AULs on value. Analysis of sales produces a view consistent with the larger body of data for properties affected at some point by contamination.
Contamination is often widespread.
To be a participant in this market means to accept that the property one wants to acquire may contain fill with unknown materials, may have been used for manufacturing during the period when solvents were routinely disposed on-site, or may be underlain with groundwater carrying contaminants from where they originated on neighboring property decades ago. Typical Phase 1 environmental surveys are limited in the degree to which they probe a property's status. Without an environmental survey that has gone into the ground to test at depth all across the face of a property, market participants operate with the possibility that, though a property may be given a clean bill of health, in fact, contaminants may remain present and undetected. For the buyers of property in Everett, Peabody, Waltham, or Milford, a guarantee of absolute cleanliness is a remote ideal. A common assertion is that contamination destroys a property's value.