Most practicing appraisers agree that when analyzing a group of five or six comparable sales with four or five value-influencing differences, it is often quite difficult to extract the appropriate adjustments through paired sales analysis.
The appraiser’s objective should be to simulate the actions and thought processes of the buyers who acquired the comparable sales.
These buyers do not typically have a list of comparable sales on which they make plus and minus adjustments for the observed differences in formulating a purchase decision. They do, however, go through the process of qualitative analyses.
An article published in The Appraisal Journal (Fall 2014) attempts to demonstrate how easily qualitative analysis can lead to objective and market-supported quantitative adjustments.
Open the journal article (PDF):