USPAP and Enough Iterations – TAA Podcast 099

USPAP and enough iterations.  What does that mean?  Really, it relates to what is in your workfile.  Or, what is supposed to be in your workfile.  OK, what is supposed to be in the workfile?  Everything.  But that answer is too general and too ambiguous really to mean anything.  Let’s see if we can be more specific, more inclusive, shall we?

When it comes to USPAP and enough iterations, we really mean analytics.  We mean the quantity of analyses necessary to come to a credible value conclusion.  Wait a minute!  This sounds as if we are talking a lot of work here!  Frankly, we may be doing just that.  You see, we cannot really analyze a comparable sale, for example, without exposing it to multiple analyses.  Yes.  When the GSEs talk about market value, they refer to a sale that meets the criteria in it.  Specifically, there are five criteria in the definition.  All of these must be present.  If they are not, the sale is not a market value transaction.  So, in the workfile there must be enough analyses to demonstrate both that and how we determined “…a reasonable time [was] allowed for [the subject’s] exposure in the open market…”.  By doing the research to answer those five questions we engage in analytics.  We have analyzed a sale to the point we conclude it was or was not a market value transaction.  These are the iterations we go through to reach this decision.

So, as we look at USPAP and enough iterations, we mean the extent of our analytics.  We look at the extent of what we did to determine it was enough.  Then, we keep all those iterations in the workfile.  Why?  We do that to demonstrate both our knowledge of and compliance with USPAP.  You’re welcome!