For a date-of-death assignment in Phoenix, local market boundaries matter because the value belongs to an earlier date. Phoenix is too large to value as one market. The report can be written today, but the market being analyzed is the one that existed on the date of death.
The valuation question belongs to the date of death, even if the property is inspected and the report is written later. Comparable sales, listings, market conditions, and the subject's condition should be organized around that historical date rather than today's market. For Phoenix, the appraisal should consider street-level location influences only when it changes the subject's competitive position.
For the historical death-date market, comparable sales should reflect the subject's actual residential setting rather than treating the city boundary as a market. Phoenix is divided into distinct planning villages, and buyer behavior often becomes more specific at the neighborhood level. That distinction belongs in the appraisal only to the extent buyers recognized it on the historical effective date.
When the value date is the date of death, Phoenix has numerous designated residential historic districts. Architectural character, additions, restoration, remodeling, lot pattern, and effective condition can matter more than year built alone when reconstructing an earlier market. On a date-of-death assignment, the feature matters because it can change which sales actually represent the subject's market.
The property observed now may not be the property that existed when the owner died. Renovations, deferred maintenance, additions, pools, roof work, site changes, or a changed use should be assigned to the historical property only when the evidence supports doing so.
Prior listings, photographs, permits, deeds, renovation records, and family documentation can help establish condition and configuration near the date of death. The goal is to resolve material differences between the home as it exists now and the home that existed on the date of death.
A supported date-of-death conclusion should be explainable from the historical property condition, competitive market, and sales evidence without relying on today's value or a later transaction.
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