Name:   John C - Subject:   Questions?? Date:   3/26/2014 3:15:47 PM

I will attempt to answer:

1. this precisely why the sales comparison approach works the best. A big water view, flat lot in Trillium is not very comparable to one that is steep, back of the slough, outside of a neighborhood, and north of the railroad trestle in Alex City. You start with lots that are most similar and adjust for differences. Adjusting for differences is where one's expertise comes in - expertise of the market as a whole, first hand knowledge about the lots in question, and practical knowledge about what REAL buyers think about lots.

2. IMO, where the appraiser is from doesn't matter as much as where he / she makes his / her living. If I were the client, I would want my appraiser to be someone that appraises on Lake Martin full time.  Similarly, although I can legally be someone's RE agent in Birmingham, I don't think I am very qualified because that's not my bailiwick, even though I am pretty familiar with that city.  It always baffles me when I see agents market themselves as experts in more than one market.  They must be a lot smarter than I am, and have more than 24 hours in a day.

3. true, these numbers are from the Lake Martin MLS so they don't include any sales that RL does not publish. However, RL did put several lot sales in the MLS in 2013 in, eg, the Ridge Phase III.  I honestly don't know how many more pure lot sales they had in '13 that were not published in the MLS, but I would be surprised if it were more than 10, which would not be that much of a change to the result (statistically). The leased lot sales from AP to the home owners are not included.  I have no clue about this, but I would guess and say there were at least 300 of these this year, an anomoly for sure. If these two camps (RL and AP) were included I don't think it would change the results on the scatter plots and the correlation coefficient because my sample size was as large as the previous 2 years ('11 and '12) combined.  I would have included those two years as well but honestly it's a pretty tedious calculation because you have to look up almost every lot's WF footage and acreage.