Opinion ID: 1730025
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: Physical Characteristics of Property

Text: DRI contends that neither the assessor nor the Board had personally inspected any of the residences to determine their actual physical characteristics before arriving at the 2004 valuations. The assessor acknowledged this, but testified that she relied on data collected during the 2003 countywide reappraisal. The assessor also acknowledged that the person who conducted the 2003 reappraisal was subsequently disciplined for certain irregularities which occurred during the reappraisal, but the assessor was never informed that there was any problem with the 2003 data collection. Generally, an assessor may reasonably rely on physical measurements made by an appraiser as part of a mass appraisal. [18] Here, the assessor also testified that when she inspected the properties subsequent to the 2004 valuations, she found no errors in the data utilized in 2004. Under similar circumstances, the Court of Appeals concluded that the presumption of validity was properly applied to the valuation as determined by a board of equalization. [19] Gary testified generally that the data collected in 2003 was inaccurate, but the record does not reflect any significant errors. The assessor conceded that one property was shown on her records as having a crawl area when, in fact, it did not. However, she explained that the TerraScan program uses crawl area as the default description of the base of a residential structure and attributes no value to it. If the structure has a basement, which does affect value, that information is manually included in place of the crawl area designation. The record does not reflect any significant errors or discrepancies in the description of the physical characteristics used to determine the 2004 valuations. Lane admitted that he utilized the county assessor's data in arriving at his opinion of the value of the residence where he lived.