"Turin's housing prices have dropped by between 25 and 35 percent while sales have decreased by about 45 percent — the same amount as the rest of Italy," said Franco Dall'Aglio, secretary general of the Torino chapter of the Federazione Italiana Mediatori Agenti d'Affari, a nationwide organization of real estate brokers.
"I think they need an overhaul of the entire system: more checks and balances, random review appraisals of the work that has been done, more qualified people," said Ruth Agnese, the president of the metropolitan New York chapter of the Appraisal Institute, a national organization of real estate appraisers.
"A lot of times you're buying a neighborhood," says John Bredemeyer, a spokesman for the Chicago-based Appraisal Institute, the largest professional organization of real estate appraisers in the U.S. "When a lot of people want in, the price per square foot a seller can get goes up".
Leslie Sellers, a certified general real estate appraiser in Knoxville, Tenn .and president of the Appraisal Institute, an organization of professional real estate appraisers, has seen some unusual properties in his 30 years evaluating homes.
Manhattan's office-vacancy rate continued its drop last year, while rents in the borough's top-of-the-line office buildings remained the third highest in the country, according to a survey by an organization of commercial real estate companies.
"It's about keeping up with the Joneses, but not exceeding them by too much," says Alan Hummel, chief appraiser of Minneapolis-based Forsythe Appraisals and former president of the Appraisal Institute, a membership organization of professional real estate appraisers.
He handles estates, divorce cases, the organization of fire-insurance companies.
That concept is nearly identical to one advanced by Douglas Durst, the head of the Durst Organization real estate development firm, who recently stepped down as chairman of the Friends of Hudson River Park, citing "differences of values and goals" with the trust.
In the large estates, or latifundia, of the Roman Empire, the complex organization of work resulted in the creation of a hierarchy of supervisors.
The local headquarters of the Grange, a national organization of farmers, is being remodeled as a community center, and real estate values have climbed.
