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CABARRUS COUNTY 2012 APPRAISAL MANUAL COLLECTION OR VERIFICATION OF CONSTRUCTION DATA, cont. Identify yourself and your purpose, remembering at all times to be polite and respectful, your identification card should be displayed on your shirt above the waist and the identifying signs should be on each side of your car. One approach is as follows: "Good morning. My name is John Doe and I am with the Cabarrus County Assessor's office; verifying data for the County Tax Reassessment. I need to ask you a few questions and walk around the outside of the house." Usually, most people are cooperative. Remember, your job is solely to collect or verify data; not to come up with the assessment value. While you are introducing yourself, glance inside to check for interior wall construction, flooring, and indications of heating and cooling systems. Your three questions can be asked as follows: "What sort of floors do you have ?" (Don't confuse rugs with carpet. The latter is physically secured to the floor; rugs are not.) "How do you heat and cool your house ?" (If they don't know, and that happens, you can almost always see physical indications from the outside such as a chimney, heat pump or an oil drum. "How many bathrooms and bedrooms do you have ?" Then, "Thank you very much. Now all I need to do is take a quick look around the outside, okay ?" Sometimes, you will have to take measurements to appraise improvements. If you have to measure the whole house, just explain to the owner you are collecting and verifying building measurements. There are a few aids to measuring that make it a little quicker and easier. A screwdriver or long nail serves as a good anchor for the tape end when you cannot get to the wall because of fences or shrubs. Despite logic, sometimes measurements will not produce a square or even sided house. Be sure to check for this before turning in the appraisal card. It is also essential that the measurements produce an even sided structure. A simple method of checking for closure is to add all the front measurements (bottom horizontal) and add all the back measurements (top horizontal) to see if the two are equal. The same should be done for the sides of the house (left and right verticals). This is known as checking for closure. Another way to insure the proper length is to measure the length without any offsets to get the overall length. The same can be done for the width. There are three basic steps to this process: 1. Measure each side of the structure accurately. 2. Make a diagram placing dimensions (rounded to the nearest foot) beside each line they represent. 3. Label structural variations with appropriate abbreviations (FEP, FSP, FCP, etc.). Lettering and numbers are to be neatly made with measurements written so as to read from the bottom of the card looking up. Cabarrus County — 2012 Revaluation DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES 5- 3 8/9/11 Attachment number 8 G -3 Page 360