C29/2003 PROPERTY VALUATION EXERCISE - 2003/2004 FINANCIAL YEAR

Purpose

The purpose of this Departmental Instruction is to provide information on the various stages of the annual property valuation exercise.

Background

Every October/November, specific income support cases requiring a property valuation are automatically selected and forwarded to the Australian Valuation Office (AVO) for valuation by April in the following year.  Once the valuations have been completed, revised valuations are returned to National Office, DVA with the new valuation amount.  This information is then forwarded to State Offices for individual case updating.

A listing of manual cases is also produced at the time of the bulk run.  State Offices are required to manually prepare and forward requests for valuation for these cases to the AVO.

Due to the implementation of IPS, schedules previously printed for State Office use are no longer available.  Automatic and Manual cases will be provided to the states in a Microsoft Excel format.

Production run

The data extraction was carried out on 15 October 2003.  The data containing information on the automatic reviews was forwarded to the AVO on 17 October 2003.  Excel spreadsheets for automatic and manual cases have been provided to the State Offices.

Number of cases extracted

The data has been extracted through the AD Hoc Inquires System (AIS).

The following is a breakdown of automatic and manual cases extracted from this year's bulk run:

State

Auto

Manual

Manual (Business)

NSW

568

218

7

VIC

604

189

4

QLD

400

202

2

SA

152

69

5

WA

140

62

0

TAS

108

32

0

Total

1972

772

18

Criterion for extracting cases

The following criteria was used for extracting cases:

• All income support pension and income support supplement recipients who are assets tested;

All income support pension and income support supplement recipients who are income tested but have assets within $10,000 of their prescribed assets limit and have property, business, farm or sublet portion of their home.

Cases excluded from exercise

The following pensioners have been excluded from this year's bulk run:

• Pensioners who have had an AVO property valuation done since the last bulk run (4 November 2002);
• All single pensioners who are assessed as blinded and are not paid rent assistance; and,
• All couples where both are assessed as blinded and are not paid rent assistance.

State Office to action manual cases

Manual cases have been forwarded to the State Offices in an Excel spreadsheet for further action.

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 Claims Management Systems (CMS) case should be created to ensure that all such requests are returned by the AVO and action completed.

AVO conduct valuations

The AVO will conduct the property valuations in the period from December 2003 to April 2004.  The AVO will provide updated valuation information to National Office, DVA by the end of April 2004.

Updated data forwarded to State Offices

Printouts and an Excel spreadsheet of the updated property valuations will be provided by National Office to the contact officer in each State Office.  These reports can be expected early May 2004.

State Office update valuations

Once the updated data is received manual action will be required to update the Central Data Base (CDB) to take effect in conjunction with the indexation of the free areas in July 2004 (Ordinary Income Free Area, Asset Value Limit & Adjusted Income Free Area).  Cases where the value of property has reduced may be actioned for increase of the service pension from the next available payday.

Date of valuation to be used

All States should use 15 October 2003 as the date of valuation when updating cases from this exercise.

It is essential that this date be used to enable all the appropriate cases to be selected for next year's exercise.  Using another date creates complications for the bulk extraction.

Processing Information

Screens and processing information for PIPS/PC can be found in Departmental Instruction C54/96.

Contact Officer

The contact officer for this exercise is Nasreen Haque (02) 6289 1125, Business Operations and Support Section, Income Support Branch.