If you are reading this you probably live in Washington State, maybe even Seattle, and your property is being condemned, or taken thorough the power of eminent domain. Assuming your property is being taken for a public purposes (a road, government building, environmental mitigation, etc.) it is time to find a Washington State eminent domain lawyer to help you through this process.As soon you hire a condemnation attorney to assist you, the first thing they will do related to getting you the money you deserve for the taking of your property is try to determine what the value of your property is as a whole. So, for example, if you have agricultural ground, your attorney will try to determine what the agricultural land prices are in your area. If it is your home, residential prices will be examined, and so on.
The first thing your Seattle eminent domain lawyer will do is call the condemning authority and ask them for a copy of their appraisal of your property. To determine what you should be paid, an appraisal of your property must be completed. And, as you might expect, often these appraisals are riddled with errors. For the purposes of this post we are going to discuss the errors related to comparable sales.
The primary way the value of your property is determined is to look at other properties in the area that are similar to yours and see what they are going for. Then, depending on how similar your property is to the comparable property, adjustments will be made up and down to determine the value of your property.
For example, let's say you have a three bedroom townhouse in Wallingford, Seattle, Washington. The City of Seattle needs to take your house for the Seattle light rail project. The first thing they would do is hire an appraiser to go and look at recent sales in the area to find out what your house is worth. If they find a sale that say is in a similar location to yours but only has 2 bedrooms, they would then adjust the price of that home up to reflect the extra bedroom.
What? Where do they get the adjustment determination? Glad you asked. They make it up based loosely on the sales they see and their experience as appraisers. That is correct, your land is subject to a Washington eminent domain taking and the adjustments that will have a direct determination on your home value are extremely subjective. This is why you need to hire an expert in eminent domain - they have the experience necessary to see the holes in this evaluation and point those out to the people writing the check.
Another thing a condemnation lawyer can do for you is do the research required to make sure they didn't miss any properties that may help determine what your property is worth and that no other properties have sold in the meantime that increase the value of your property. In the example above, one single sale in the area for a high value could substantially affect the value of your home in an upward direction. We can find that sale (if it exists) and present it to the condemning authority in a way that is highly likely to get more money for your property.
Whatever you decide to do, take the time to really analyze how the condemning authority determined the value of your Washington property. You might be surprised how much value was left off the table.
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