DATE OF ISSUE:  19 DECEMBER 1996

PROPERTY VALUATION EXERCISE

Purpose

The purpose of this Departmental Instruction is to provide information on different stages of the annual property valuation exercise for 1996/97 financial year.

Background

2.The Australian Valuation Office (AVO) have been providing all valuations of property, business, farm or a sub-let portion of home for the selected cases for a set amount each year.  For the 1996/97 financial year payment for the services provided by AVO will be made based on a fee for service instead of the bulk payment.

3.This year's exercise began in December 1996 with the transfer of data to the Australian Valuations Office.   The last stage for this exercise will not be completed until the IFA/AFA exercise in mid 1997.

4.State Offices are required to keep a record of all valuation requests sent to AVO during the 1996/97 financial year to enable reconciliation of property valuations by the National Office.

STAGE 1   Production Run

5.The first stage was the transfer of data containing information on the automatic review cases via Internet to the Australian Valuation Office (AVO) on Monday 2 December 1996.

6.The number of valuations extracted nationally from this year's production run was 3,226 of which 830 were manual cases.  This is the breakdown of automatic and manual cases by State:

StateManualAuto

NSW — 268 — 745

VIC — 158 — 592

QLD — 222 — 506

SA — 66 — 179

WA — 74 — 186

TAS — 42 — 188

STAGE 2   State Office Action - Manual Cases

7.A schedule of all cases (including cases without previous valuation with AVO) has been sent to the State Offices.   State Office action is required to provide the AVO with a form containing detailed information on each of the manual cases where a property valuation is required. Records are to be kept and a CMS case should be created to ensure that all such requests are returned by AVO and action completed.

Overseas Cases

8.These cases remain manual.  Departmental Instruction B26/94 sets out the process for obtaining these valuations.

STAGE 3   AVO Action Requests

9.The AVO will conduct the necessary valuations in the period from December 1996 to April 1997.   AVO will update the valuation information and forward the updated information via Internet to DVA by 15 April 1997.

STAGE 4   Ferntree Prints Forms

10.The Ferntree Computer Centre will produce print outs of the updated property valuations and send them to the relevant State Offices. These reports can be expected in early May 1997.

STAGE 5   State Office Action  Update Valuations

11.Once the printed request forms are received manual action will be required to update the CDB to take effect in conjunction with the IFA/AFA exercise.   All States should use 28 November 1996 as the date of valuation on the property screen, when updating all cases from this exercise.  The selection run for this year's exercise was conducted on 28 November and using this date will help us in selection of the review cases for the next year's exercise.   Cases where the value of property has reduced may be actioned for increase of the service pension from the next convenient payday.

Screens

12.With the PIPS/PC implementation in 1996 some screen changes were made.  The following are screens used to data collect AVO job and ID numbers.

13.The Property Screen has fields for AVO Job number, AVO ID number and fields for:

Home & Curtilage — amount to be a deduction from property valuation

Mortgage — amount to be a deduction from property valuation

Other Encumbrance — amount to be a deduction from property valuation

Assessed Asset — a system generated total (property valuation plus contents minus home and curtilage, mortgage and other encumbrance)

Text — this is a free text area to record notes such as shared ownership lease arrangements, extra properties, etc.

The property types are:

Business Property

Curtilage Excess

Commercial Property

Other

Residential/Rental

Rural/Property

Sublet Portion of home

Second residence

Time share

Vacant Land

14.The Farm Screen has fields for AVO Job number, AVO ID number and fields for:

Plant and Machinery — amount to be added to farm valuation

Livestock — amount to be added to farm valuation

Home & Curtilage — amount to be a deduction from farm valuation

Mortgage — amount to be a deduction from farm valuation

Other Encumbrance — amount to be a deduction from farm valuation

Assessed Asset — a system generated total (farm valuation plus plant & machinery and livestock minus home and curtilage, mortgage and other encumbrance)

Text — this is a free text area to record notes such as shared ownership, lease arrangements, extra properties, etc.

15.Plant and Machinery and Livestock information are often stored on the Other Personal Assets and examiners should transfer details to the Farm Screen when updating that screen.

Contact Officer

16.The contact officer for this exercise is Ferri Ghazi on (06) 289 6436.

Jeanette Ricketts

A/g Branch Head

Income Support

  December 1996