It is increasingly the case that Public Housing Authorities are required to account for the financial performance and condition of their property portfolio on a regular basis. This is certainly the case in Australia where property and housing are largely the responsibility of State Governments rather than the Federal Government. In terms of asset values and performance, these are required annually, in market terms – not a nominal replacement value based on costs.
How should such portfolio valuation and assessment tasks be undertaken to be able to make portfolio estimates to a given level of accuracy at a minimal cost?
These issues will be discussed in relation to two New South Wales (NSW) State Government housing portfolios:
- Land and Housing Corporationwhich manages a portfolio of 150,000 public housing properties; and
- Teacher Housing Authoritywhich manages a portfolio of 1,500 properties to provide accommodation for school teachers in mainly remote areas of NSW.
In both cases, mass appraisal methods are used but most critical is the choice of the benchmark properties on which the mass appraisal models are based.