Nora Devine Full EP 21
Nora Devine: Welcome to Devine Intervention Shedding Light on Illinois Property Tax. Hello and welcome to Devine Intervention Shedding Light on Illinois Property Tax with Nora Devine. I'm your host, Nora Devine, and I've been a property tax attorney in private practice since 2005. I've developed a statewide practice in all jurisdictions in Illinois, representing all property classes. Today we're taking a closer look at the income approach to value and how it can be used or abused in the property tax context.
Bob Becker: We.
Nora Devine: With us today we have Bob Becker, a very busy commercial appraiser in Illinois who appraises complex assets in all counties. But he has a special focus on Property south of i80. Bob, welcome to the show.
Bob Becker: Thanks for having me.
Nora Devine: It's really good to see you. Why don't you tell us a bit about your background and how you got your start doing commercial appraisals in Illinois.
Bob Becker: Sure. So I started, down south. I actually live, south of Mattoon a little bit. And so in that area is predominantly farmland, which is, kind of what I started out doing. And then as I got my certified general license, I started branching out, doing more of the, commercial, just general retail, that kind of stuff. And eventually, sought after the more complex assignments throughout the state of Illinois. And then, I've just started, you know, have always just, you know, sought after the. The complex properties and. And then eventually kind of got known for that and started getting a following, you know, through the rest of the state.
Nora Devine: And then before there was Bob Becker, there was. There was kind of Ed Salisbury. Right. Did you work with Ed at all?
Bob Becker: Yeah, so I worked originally started with Corey appraisal out of Charleston. And then, went over to work with Ed for a couple years before he he ended up retiring, which was, 2018. That he retired.
Nora Devine: Nice. you said you were. Got your start appraising farmland. what do you do when, when you're appraising farmland? How do you, I mean, do you. Is it contesting the productivity of the. Of the land or. Or what is it.
Bob Becker: So with that, again, there's a lot of, auction sales, which is different I guess, than a lot of other, properties. So it would be, going to auctions, talking to the farmers at the auctions, see who was buying, what their interpretation of the, tillable percentage and the productivity of the land was, and based on that, what they were willing to pay for it. so you get a lot more, I guess, personal interaction, with the farmland, appraising Than with appraising.
Nora Devine: This was more like for market value, not for property tax purposes. That type of appraisals?
Bob Becker: Yeah, initially it was for for estates, estate settlement and for lending purposes.
Nora Devine: So do you do mostly work for private taxpayers or are you doing valuation work for banks or for the public sector? What kind of what kind of jobs are you mostly doing?
Bob Becker: Yeah, so now I do pretty much litigation focused or property tax appeal focused. And you know, that ranges from again for ad valorem, for property tax or for right of way condemnation all the way to separation of business assets or you know, dissolution of marriages, whatever the, whatever the case may be.
Nora Devine: And so for those who are listening, who might not be familiar, can you briefly explain what the cost approach to value is and how it's different from the other valuation methods like the sales comparison approach or the income approach?
Bob Becker: Yeah, so the cost approach is, is kind of unique in that it will actually take a specific look at the the subject property that you're looking at. So it will consider all the individual aspects of that property. And then with those individual elements you produce, you would do a replacement, ah, cost, on that property. And then from that you take out forms of depreciation, either functional, physical or external to represent what the property actually is as as it sits today.
Nora Devine: So in Illinois property tax cases, when is the cost approach most relevant or persuasive compared to the other approaches?
Bob Becker: Yeah, so the cost approach would be more relevant on special use properties. So if you have like a school, whether it be a private or public school, or maybe a library, things of that nature that are, are special use and don't generally transact in the marketplace.
Nora Devine: Okay, so like, give me an example. Like you have a, like three properties you could think of that you've done in the last year where you really leaned into the cost approach.
Bob Becker: Yeah, yeah, again, so like the like a library, if
00:05:00
Bob Becker: it was an individual that owns a library, or even if it's a library district that's trying to sell a building, you know, they would need an appraisal in order to be able to sell the property. there's been a number of private public schools, that transact again that you would need, that you would put primary focus on the cost approach.
Nora Devine: Got it. and farm buildings too, right?
Bob Becker: Yeah, sometimes on farm buildings, just because, you know, each farm is going to be unique as far as the, the amount of buildings that they have and what they contribute to.
Nora Devine: So what are the, some of the challenges that you have when you're trying to apply a cost approach to, to a property that you're valuing?
Bob Becker: Probably the biggest challenge would be the land value. because the cost approach requires not only doing a replacement cost calculation, but also you need to have the land value component. And in a lot of areas land sales are, are pretty scarce. so coming up with the land value, Also quantifying the correct amount of depreciation is a is a challenge because you know, you have different environmental factors or that affect properties. And so making sure that you capture all the forms of depreciation.
Nora Devine: So you're in depreciation. You mean there's functional obsolescence, economic obsolescence. You know, what do those terms even mean?
Bob Becker: Yeah, so you have physical depreciation which is just the, the wear and tear on the, you know, the physical asset of the property. The roof. The roof, the exterior, parking lots, that kind of stuff. I mean how much it's physically wearing down. And then Functional obsolescence is a measurement of what the market expectation is. So say if you have like a multi, multi story apartment building that was constructed before elevators become standard and in modern times an elevator is standard for, for a multi story apartment building. you know, that would be a functional item that your property may not have. And so it suffers additional hindrances compared to a property that would have an elevator. And then you have external obsolescence. the most common form of external obsolescence is economic obsolescence, which is basically that the rent achievable in the market is below what is required to support the current improvements of the property.
Nora Devine: I see. I worked on a office building one time that was very close to o' Hare and I didn't understand. Rent roll was very strange to me because the whole basement was leased up and the first floor was leased up. And then on the sixth floor, which is like the top floor of the building or whatever, seventh, whatever the top floor was, there was no tenants. And so I thought, I don't understand. And then went there to tour the property. And it turns out this office building is right at the end of that extremely long Runway at o' Hare that they built for those jumbo jets. And every so often the. This jumbo jet would take off of the Runway and it would miss you know, the top of the building by about like this much building would shake the windows, would Shake. It was terrifying. And so, you know, isn't that like a form of, external obsolescence where they. They built this brand new Runway that basically made it so that nobody wanted to be on the top floor of this building anymore?
Bob Becker: Yeah, absolutely. That, that would be, more environmental, external obsolescence. but yeah, that's definitely, ah, definitely a good example.
Nora Devine: I've never seen anything like a rent roll like that. It's like, why would you want to be in the basement? Then I went there and I was like, oh, I see. I see exactly why you want to be in the basement in this building. What do you do with the land value question when the sales are scarce?
Bob Becker: So sometimes you're forced to just use, you know, m more dated, sales data that you would normally use. I've used some, land sales data that's, you know, 10 and 15 years old, and then you trend it forward up until, current time. also you can use extraction methods where if you have, sale of buildings surrounding the subject property, you could extract out the land. M. If you're in an area that has high, ground lease, ground leases available and you can get information, based on those ground leases, then you can use that also to, to come up with a, land value.
Nora Devine: Okay. And I know you do a lot of testifying in Illinois tax cases. Like what are the misconceptions you run into out there with either deciders of fact or assessors or
00:10:00
Nora Devine: attorneys? You know, what types of misconceptions are out there in the property tax context?
Bob Becker: Yeah. So for property context, the, or property appeal context, the, misconception is that, you know, no weight is applied to the cost approach a lot of times. or that the cost approach is always the highest value. Right. And the cost approach is not always the highest value. And actually, if, the method is done correctly, then the cost approach should come relatively in line with the sales and income approach. And so I think if. If a cost approach is developed and it's coming in, you know, substantially higher or below, below the other two approaches to value, then there was something, either not correct in the other two approaches to value or something not correct in the, cost approach. And so, you know, it's always been treated kind of as its own little method, kind of stand aside of the other two methods. But actually they should be, you know, really treated or handled about the same because they really should reconcile within a relatively close, number of each other. Now, obviously, you know, maybe in the final reconciliation, one approach, such as the sales comparison approach is given primary weight, and that's how the appraisal is reconciled. But it is a good test of reasonableness to make sure that the other the other two approaches are you know, in line or reasonable.
Nora Devine: Yeah, I've been doing this work for 20 plus years and earlier in my career I remember going to you know, say a jurisdiction that didn't have a lot of commercial tax base. And I would you know, be talking to them about the sales and the market and the income approach and things. And they would just print out a Marshall Swift printout and they would say here you go, it's fairly assessed. I put in the building size, I put in the building age, I put in the construction materials and you know, here you go. And they would kind of beat me over the head with a Marshall Swift printout and tell me that that was gospel. And I don't see that as much anymore. I think that the continuing education for the assessors in general has, has improved over the last few decades with just changes with that they, that the IPII has made in terms of the, the educational offerings they have. So I don't see that a ton anymore. But I was wondering, do you still see that out there?
Bob Becker: Yeah, I think from from a downstate perspective there's still heavy reliance on the, the cost approach, mainly because of lack of sales data and you know, jurisdictions downstate and also budget ah, constraints where maybe they can't go in and hire the staff, they need to do a larger mass analysis or they don't have the budget to afford some of the data subscriptions, things of that nature. And that's why I always like applying the cost approach in my appraisals. even if I don't ultimately reconcile to it. I think that it helps provide a bigger picture to the assessors as to. Okay, yeah, I'm reconciling to the sales comparison approach. But here's how it relates to the cost approach and here's some depreciation that's affecting this property that maybe you didn't consider because you're looking at more of a mass appraisal model and just considering physical depreciation where this property also suffers functional and external obsolescence. And so I think that helps paint a clearer picture for the assessors when they can, they can look through and read something that they're accustomed to you know, completing on a daily Basis in their offices.
Nora Devine: Yeah. You touched on something I've always wondered about, about the availability of data pertaining to commercial sales south of I80. Why is CoStar such or whatever you call it now? Is it still doing, you're doing the research through COSTAR or their sister product now, but all that. The commercial databases are somewhat accurate for Cook county and the surrounding counties, but once you get south of I80 the commercial data just is less available. Why do you think that is?
Bob Becker: Yeah, I think you, you know the, the data sources that are out there like costar, crexi, they rely on brokers to input that data or survey of brokers. And I think that downstate there's probably
00:15:00
Bob Becker: less I guess conformity, you know that the brokers downstate aren't necessarily going to put all the commercial sales into COSTAR or to CREXI or even subscribe to that, that type of system. You know, they're just going to have it listed on their local MLS and you know generally that's all they need to be able to sell the, sell property.
Nora Devine: And we've seen a lot of fluctuation in general in the construction costs ever since the pandemic. How accurate do you think their resources are, you know, to take into account all these fluctuations like the assessor's cost manuals that they use, the Department of Revenue cost manual that they put out, the Marshall and Swift data. Are they, do you think keeping pace with some of these escalating costs with their data?
Bob Becker: I would say that Marshall valuation is fairly well keeping up. You know they re release data on a monthly basis. In the, in each release they have different multipliers that, that tell the story kind of what the market's doing as far as construction costs at that time. you know the assessment offices you know, maybe aren't keeping up as, as much as what they could but again you know you're focusing more on equity at that point versus you know, getting exactly the market right. I know some, some offices will only update their cost manual, you know, every four to six years. And so yeah, they're definitely not keeping, keep an update with current construction costs but they're using other, other things like township and county multipliers to, to try to stay ahead of it.
Nora Devine: And then you know, when you're prepping for a trial or any kind of in person hearing where you're going to be cross examined and all that, what are the things that you like to prepare when you're talking about the cost approach with whichever advocate is handling the case. Whether if you're working on the government side, it would be probably the state's attorney representing the board. If you're working on a taxpayer side, it would be an attorney like me. Is there anything specific about your hearing prep that you like to focus on when it comes to the cost approach?
Bob Becker: I mean generally the, the areas that the cost approach, is, is most heavily scrutinized is obviously the land sales and how you develop the land value and then also the quality of the property that you use. You know, Marshall and Swift provides generally five different, four different quality building, qualities, for each building type. So say if you're looking at just like a general retail, you know, as low cost, average, good and excellent, and there's always the, the definitions of them are sometimes, you know, a thin line between good and excellent. And so that always becomes an issue as to what did you consider and why did you ultimately give an opinion of X quality versus you know, the higher or lower quality? And so that always tends to be an area of debate. But the rest of the cost approach is generally straightforward, especially if you have good, good support for your depreciation and multiple sources of support for your depreciation analysis.
Nora Devine: All right, well, thank you for joining us. We know a lot more about the cost approach now. Thanks to you. And thanks to everyone who's listening today for joining on this, episode of Devine Intervention. If you need help with a complex commercial property tax appeal, we are here to help. Visit the devinelawgroup.com Our team can help you identify risks and opportunities for property tax savings. And if you need a reliable opinion of value of a complex commercial asset in Illinois, but especially downstate, you can find Bob Becker@rdbechervaluation.com Be sure to like, leave a review and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Bob, thanks so much for being on the show with us today.
Bob Becker: Absolutely, thanks for having me.
Nora Devine: Thanks for watching. Be sure to hit that like and subscribe button and leave us a review in the comments.
00:19:25
Nora Devine: Welcome to Devine Intervention Shedding Light on Illinois Property Tax. Hello and welcome to Devine Intervention Shedding Light on Illinois Property Tax with Nora Devine. I'm your host, Nora Devine, and I've been a property tax attorney in private practice since 2005. I've developed a statewide practice in all jurisdictions in Illinois, representing all property classes. Today we're taking a closer look at the income approach to value and how it can be used or abused in the property tax context.
Bob Becker: We.
Nora Devine: With us today we have Bob Becker, a very busy commercial appraiser in Illinois who appraises complex assets in all counties. But he has a special focus on Property south of i80. Bob, welcome to the show.
Bob Becker: Thanks for having me.
Nora Devine: It's really good to see you. Why don't you tell us a bit about your background and how you got your start doing commercial appraisals in Illinois.
Bob Becker: Sure. So I started, down south. I actually live, south of Mattoon a little bit. And so in that area is predominantly farmland, which is, kind of what I started out doing. And then as I got my certified general license, I started branching out, doing more of the, commercial, just general retail, that kind of stuff. And eventually, sought after the more complex assignments throughout the state of Illinois. And then, I've just started, you know, have always just, you know, sought after the. The complex properties and. And then eventually kind of got known for that and started getting a following, you know, through the rest of the state.
Nora Devine: And then before there was Bob Becker, there was. There was kind of Ed Salisbury. Right. Did you work with Ed at all?
Bob Becker: Yeah, so I worked originally started with Corey appraisal out of Charleston. And then, went over to work with Ed for a couple years before he he ended up retiring, which was, 2018. That he retired.
Nora Devine: Nice. you said you were. Got your start appraising farmland. what do you do when, when you're appraising farmland? How do you, I mean, do you. Is it contesting the productivity of the. Of the land or. Or what is it.
Bob Becker: So with that, again, there's a lot of, auction sales, which is different I guess, than a lot of other, properties. So it would be, going to auctions, talking to the farmers at the auctions, see who was buying, what their interpretation of the, tillable percentage and the productivity of the land was, and based on that, what they were willing to pay for it. so you get a lot more, I guess, personal interaction, with the farmland, appraising Than with appraising.
Nora Devine: This was more like for market value, not for property tax purposes. That type of appraisals?
Bob Becker: Yeah, initially it was for for estates, estate settlement and for lending purposes.
Nora Devine: So do you do mostly work for private taxpayers or are you doing valuation work for banks or for the public sector? What kind of what kind of jobs are you mostly doing?
Bob Becker: Yeah, so now I do pretty much litigation focused or property tax appeal focused. And you know, that ranges from again for ad valorem, for property tax or for right of way condemnation all the way to separation of business assets or you know, dissolution of marriages, whatever the, whatever the case may be.
Nora Devine: And so for those who are listening, who might not be familiar, can you briefly explain what the cost approach to value is and how it's different from the other valuation methods like the sales comparison approach or the income approach?
Bob Becker: Yeah, so the cost approach is, is kind of unique in that it will actually take a specific look at the the subject property that you're looking at. So it will consider all the individual aspects of that property. And then with those individual elements you produce, you would do a replacement, ah, cost, on that property. And then from that you take out forms of depreciation, either functional, physical or external to represent what the property actually is as as it sits today.
Nora Devine: So in Illinois property tax cases, when is the cost approach most relevant or persuasive compared to the other approaches?
Bob Becker: Yeah, so the cost approach would be more relevant on special use properties. So if you have like a school, whether it be a private or public school, or maybe a library, things of that nature that are, are special use and don't generally transact in the marketplace.
Nora Devine: Okay, so like, give me an example. Like you have a, like three properties you could think of that you've done in the last year where you really leaned into the cost approach.
Bob Becker: Yeah, yeah, again, so like the like a library, if
00:05:00
Bob Becker: it was an individual that owns a library, or even if it's a library district that's trying to sell a building, you know, they would need an appraisal in order to be able to sell the property. there's been a number of private public schools, that transact again that you would need, that you would put primary focus on the cost approach.
Nora Devine: Got it. and farm buildings too, right?
Bob Becker: Yeah, sometimes on farm buildings, just because, you know, each farm is going to be unique as far as the, the amount of buildings that they have and what they contribute to.
Nora Devine: So what are the, some of the challenges that you have when you're trying to apply a cost approach to, to a property that you're valuing?
Bob Becker: Probably the biggest challenge would be the land value. because the cost approach requires not only doing a replacement cost calculation, but also you need to have the land value component. And in a lot of areas land sales are, are pretty scarce. so coming up with the land value, Also quantifying the correct amount of depreciation is a is a challenge because you know, you have different environmental factors or that affect properties. And so making sure that you capture all the forms of depreciation.
Nora Devine: So you're in depreciation. You mean there's functional obsolescence, economic obsolescence. You know, what do those terms even mean?
Bob Becker: Yeah, so you have physical depreciation which is just the, the wear and tear on the, you know, the physical asset of the property. The roof. The roof, the exterior, parking lots, that kind of stuff. I mean how much it's physically wearing down. And then Functional obsolescence is a measurement of what the market expectation is. So say if you have like a multi, multi story apartment building that was constructed before elevators become standard and in modern times an elevator is standard for, for a multi story apartment building. you know, that would be a functional item that your property may not have. And so it suffers additional hindrances compared to a property that would have an elevator. And then you have external obsolescence. the most common form of external obsolescence is economic obsolescence, which is basically that the rent achievable in the market is below what is required to support the current improvements of the property.
Nora Devine: I see. I worked on a office building one time that was very close to o' Hare and I didn't understand. Rent roll was very strange to me because the whole basement was leased up and the first floor was leased up. And then on the sixth floor, which is like the top floor of the building or whatever, seventh, whatever the top floor was, there was no tenants. And so I thought, I don't understand. And then went there to tour the property. And it turns out this office building is right at the end of that extremely long Runway at o' Hare that they built for those jumbo jets. And every so often the. This jumbo jet would take off of the Runway and it would miss you know, the top of the building by about like this much building would shake the windows, would Shake. It was terrifying. And so, you know, isn't that like a form of, external obsolescence where they. They built this brand new Runway that basically made it so that nobody wanted to be on the top floor of this building anymore?
Bob Becker: Yeah, absolutely. That, that would be, more environmental, external obsolescence. but yeah, that's definitely, ah, definitely a good example.
Nora Devine: I've never seen anything like a rent roll like that. It's like, why would you want to be in the basement? Then I went there and I was like, oh, I see. I see exactly why you want to be in the basement in this building. What do you do with the land value question when the sales are scarce?
Bob Becker: So sometimes you're forced to just use, you know, m more dated, sales data that you would normally use. I've used some, land sales data that's, you know, 10 and 15 years old, and then you trend it forward up until, current time. also you can use extraction methods where if you have, sale of buildings surrounding the subject property, you could extract out the land. M. If you're in an area that has high, ground lease, ground leases available and you can get information, based on those ground leases, then you can use that also to, to come up with a, land value.
Nora Devine: Okay. And I know you do a lot of testifying in Illinois tax cases. Like what are the misconceptions you run into out there with either deciders of fact or assessors or
00:10:00
Nora Devine: attorneys? You know, what types of misconceptions are out there in the property tax context?
Bob Becker: Yeah. So for property context, the, or property appeal context, the, misconception is that, you know, no weight is applied to the cost approach a lot of times. or that the cost approach is always the highest value. Right. And the cost approach is not always the highest value. And actually, if, the method is done correctly, then the cost approach should come relatively in line with the sales and income approach. And so I think if. If a cost approach is developed and it's coming in, you know, substantially higher or below, below the other two approaches to value, then there was something, either not correct in the other two approaches to value or something not correct in the, cost approach. And so, you know, it's always been treated kind of as its own little method, kind of stand aside of the other two methods. But actually they should be, you know, really treated or handled about the same because they really should reconcile within a relatively close, number of each other. Now, obviously, you know, maybe in the final reconciliation, one approach, such as the sales comparison approach is given primary weight, and that's how the appraisal is reconciled. But it is a good test of reasonableness to make sure that the other the other two approaches are you know, in line or reasonable.
Nora Devine: Yeah, I've been doing this work for 20 plus years and earlier in my career I remember going to you know, say a jurisdiction that didn't have a lot of commercial tax base. And I would you know, be talking to them about the sales and the market and the income approach and things. And they would just print out a Marshall Swift printout and they would say here you go, it's fairly assessed. I put in the building size, I put in the building age, I put in the construction materials and you know, here you go. And they would kind of beat me over the head with a Marshall Swift printout and tell me that that was gospel. And I don't see that as much anymore. I think that the continuing education for the assessors in general has, has improved over the last few decades with just changes with that they, that the IPII has made in terms of the, the educational offerings they have. So I don't see that a ton anymore. But I was wondering, do you still see that out there?
Bob Becker: Yeah, I think from from a downstate perspective there's still heavy reliance on the, the cost approach, mainly because of lack of sales data and you know, jurisdictions downstate and also budget ah, constraints where maybe they can't go in and hire the staff, they need to do a larger mass analysis or they don't have the budget to afford some of the data subscriptions, things of that nature. And that's why I always like applying the cost approach in my appraisals. even if I don't ultimately reconcile to it. I think that it helps provide a bigger picture to the assessors as to. Okay, yeah, I'm reconciling to the sales comparison approach. But here's how it relates to the cost approach and here's some depreciation that's affecting this property that maybe you didn't consider because you're looking at more of a mass appraisal model and just considering physical depreciation where this property also suffers functional and external obsolescence. And so I think that helps paint a clearer picture for the assessors when they can, they can look through and read something that they're accustomed to you know, completing on a daily Basis in their offices.
Nora Devine: Yeah. You touched on something I've always wondered about, about the availability of data pertaining to commercial sales south of I80. Why is CoStar such or whatever you call it now? Is it still doing, you're doing the research through COSTAR or their sister product now, but all that. The commercial databases are somewhat accurate for Cook county and the surrounding counties, but once you get south of I80 the commercial data just is less available. Why do you think that is?
Bob Becker: Yeah, I think you, you know the, the data sources that are out there like costar, crexi, they rely on brokers to input that data or survey of brokers. And I think that downstate there's probably
00:15:00
Bob Becker: less I guess conformity, you know that the brokers downstate aren't necessarily going to put all the commercial sales into COSTAR or to CREXI or even subscribe to that, that type of system. You know, they're just going to have it listed on their local MLS and you know generally that's all they need to be able to sell the, sell property.
Nora Devine: And we've seen a lot of fluctuation in general in the construction costs ever since the pandemic. How accurate do you think their resources are, you know, to take into account all these fluctuations like the assessor's cost manuals that they use, the Department of Revenue cost manual that they put out, the Marshall and Swift data. Are they, do you think keeping pace with some of these escalating costs with their data?
Bob Becker: I would say that Marshall valuation is fairly well keeping up. You know they re release data on a monthly basis. In the, in each release they have different multipliers that, that tell the story kind of what the market's doing as far as construction costs at that time. you know the assessment offices you know, maybe aren't keeping up as, as much as what they could but again you know you're focusing more on equity at that point versus you know, getting exactly the market right. I know some, some offices will only update their cost manual, you know, every four to six years. And so yeah, they're definitely not keeping, keep an update with current construction costs but they're using other, other things like township and county multipliers to, to try to stay ahead of it.
Nora Devine: And then you know, when you're prepping for a trial or any kind of in person hearing where you're going to be cross examined and all that, what are the things that you like to prepare when you're talking about the cost approach with whichever advocate is handling the case. Whether if you're working on the government side, it would be probably the state's attorney representing the board. If you're working on a taxpayer side, it would be an attorney like me. Is there anything specific about your hearing prep that you like to focus on when it comes to the cost approach?
Bob Becker: I mean generally the, the areas that the cost approach, is, is most heavily scrutinized is obviously the land sales and how you develop the land value and then also the quality of the property that you use. You know, Marshall and Swift provides generally five different, four different quality building, qualities, for each building type. So say if you're looking at just like a general retail, you know, as low cost, average, good and excellent, and there's always the, the definitions of them are sometimes, you know, a thin line between good and excellent. And so that always becomes an issue as to what did you consider and why did you ultimately give an opinion of X quality versus you know, the higher or lower quality? And so that always tends to be an area of debate. But the rest of the cost approach is generally straightforward, especially if you have good, good support for your depreciation and multiple sources of support for your depreciation analysis.
Nora Devine: All right, well, thank you for joining us. We know a lot more about the cost approach now. Thanks to you. And thanks to everyone who's listening today for joining on this, episode of Devine Intervention. If you need help with a complex commercial property tax appeal, we are here to help. Visit the devinelawgroup.com Our team can help you identify risks and opportunities for property tax savings. And if you need a reliable opinion of value of a complex commercial asset in Illinois, but especially downstate, you can find Bob Becker@rdbechervaluation.com Be sure to like, leave a review and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Bob, thanks so much for being on the show with us today.
Bob Becker: Absolutely, thanks for having me.
Nora Devine: Thanks for watching. Be sure to hit that like and subscribe button and leave us a review in the comments.
00:19:25
