C50/2002 PROPERTY VALUATION EXERCISE - 2002/2003 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 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, they are forwarded back to DVA with the new valuation amount.  The output is then forwarded to the State Offices for 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 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 4 November 2002.  The data containing information on the automatic review was forwarded to the AVO on 5 November 2002.  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 years bulk run:

State

Auto

Manual

Manual (Business)

NSW

668

263

7

VIC

640

201

5

QLD

461

152

2

SA

127

48

7

WA

172

89

0

TAS

128

29

0

Total

2196

782

21

Criterion for extracting cases

The following criteria was used for extracting cases:

• All income support and income support supplement recipients who are asset tested;

All income support 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 (3 November 2001);
• All single pensioners who are assessed as blinded and are not paid rent assistance;
• 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 format 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 necessary valuations in the period from December 2002 to April 2003.  The AVO will update the valuation information and forward the updated information to DVA by the end of April 2003.

Updated data forwarded to State Offices

Printouts and an Excel spreadsheet of the updated property valuations will be provided to the contact officer in each State Office.  These reports can be expected early May 2003.

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 2003 (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 convenient payday.

Date of valuation to be used

All States should use 4 November 2002 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.