Comments on "You Can't Get the Value Right if You Get the Rights Wrong" (Letter to the Editor‪)‬

We, the cosigners of this response, read with great interest the article by David Lennhoff, MAI, SRA, entitled "You Can't Get the Value Right If You Get the Rights Wrong" (Winter 2009). The following comments are not an official position of the Maricopa County Assessor's Office, but are a reflection of the thoughts and concerns we have over what is being proposed in the article. The premise of the article appears to be that single-tenant, built-to-suit (or custom) commercial real estate can be overvalued if an appraiser focuses solely on property-specific factors, rather than general market forces, to estimate market value. The article then goes on to assert that "the best support for the components of both the sales comparison approach and the components of the income capitalization approach is second-generation space." To automatically default to valuing first-generation space as if it were second-generation space ignores the market's acceptance of the property.