Appraisal Institute unveils property use classification system

CHICAGO, IL One of the nation’s largest professional association of real estate appraisers has unveiled an information system that classifies and describes property uses and assists real estate analysts and others with their property use data storage and analysis.

The Appraisal Institute announced that its Property Use Classification System, known as PUCS, can help appraisers, appraisal firms, data companies and vendors to the valuation profession and the real estate industry sort or organize real estate property information.

“The Appraisal Institute’s Property Use Classification System has wide applicability through the real estate sector,” said Appraisal Institute president James Murrett, MAI, SRA. “It will be of tremendous value to stakeholders and service providers to the valuation profession, real estate brokers, architects, engineers and others.”

Murrett noted that appraisers could use PUCS to create databases of comparable sales. Clients of appraisers could use the tool to better or more completely describe assignments to appraisers, he said. And real estate companies looking to organize data could use it to align with valuation processes and procedures, he added.

PUCS is based on the Appraisal Institute’s Commercial Data Storage Standard developed in 2003. PUCS expands the number of property classes from 13 to 18 and divides uses for land and buildings. Specifically, PUCS contains three levels of use classification:

• Property class;
• Property type; and
• Property subtype.   

PUCS contains an expansive number of property types and property subtypes inclusive of the hundreds of property types that appraisers regularly value, including newly developed uses such as energy, rock-climbing facilities, recycling centers, waste transfer stations and intermodal properties. 

PUCS was developed over several years by the Appraisal Institute’s PUCS Project Team, comprised of AI Designated Members and subject matter experts. PUCS incorporates input from several hundred real estate valuation professionals who commented on multiple exposure drafts.

PUCS v. 1.0 is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution- NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-ND).

Learn more at https://www.appraisalinstitute.org/professional-practice/pucs/.