Opinion ID: 2831421
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Sheridan Site

Text: To find a diminution in the Sheridan site’s value, McKinney relied on: (1) the owner’s original offer to sell the property for $2,200,000, and (2) a subsequent verbal offer to purchase the property for $1,300,000. McKinney treated the owner’s list price as the property’s unimpaired market value and the verbal offer price as the property’s impaired market value, and opined that the site suffered a $900,000 (41%) diminution in value attributable to the nearby contamination. These facts do not support McKinney’s opinion for three reasons. First, the owner’s original asking price does not, alone, tend to establish the property’s market value at the time of listing. Market value is “what a willing buyer under no compulsion to buy will pay to a willing seller under no compulsion to sell.” Cf. French v. Occidental Permian Ltd., — S.W.3d —, — (Tex. June 27, 2014). An original list price is some evidence of what a willing seller will accept, but it is not evidence of what a willing buyer will pay. Sellers may list property at a price above the amount they actually expect to receive or may simply overestimate the property’s true market value. Second, the verbal offer price does not, alone, tend to establish the property’s market value at the time it was made. A verbal offer is some evidence of what a 16 willing buyer will pay, but it is not, alone, evidence of what a willing seller will accept. Cf. French, — S.W.3d at —. Buyers may offer less than the amount they are actually willing to pay, in hopes of acquiring the property for less than it is worth, or they may simply underestimate the value of the property. As a result, the fact that a verbal offer was made on the Sheridan site for less than the original asking price does not tend to prove that it suffered a diminution in market value. Third, the difference between the asking price and the offer price does not tend to establish a loss attributable to the nearby contamination because both the asking price and the verbal offer occurred after the land near the Sheridan site was contaminated. McKinney’s own report indicates that the contamination dates back to at least 1986, while the listing on which McKinney relied for the site’s “unimpaired” value was in 2006. Thus, even if the difference between the original list price and the verbal offer did reflect a diminution in value, the data on which this diminution is based are not temporally connected to the contamination some twenty years earlier. It is possible that the original list price reflected the property’s pre-contamination price, but there is no evidence that indicates that was the case. When the facts support several possible conclusions, only some of which support the expert’s conclusions, the expert must explain to the fact finder why those conclusions are superior based on verifiable evidence, not simply the expert’s opinion. Jelinek, 328 S.W.3d at 536.