106 MISC. PUBLICATION 218, U. 8S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
the conditions of an actual sale rarely reflect perfectly the equal bal- 
ance of bargaining power between buyer and seller necessary to reach 
a consideration that would be conclusive as to the value. Also the 
value at the time of the sale may not equal the value at the date of 
assessment. ‘Transactions which are clearly subject to bias, such as 
forced sales or sales between closely related parties, must be elim- 
inated. In other transactions it may be presumed that sometimes 
the buyer has the greater bargaining power and sometimes the seller, 
but since there is nothing to indicate that either has any consistent 
advantage, the aggregate consideration of a group of sales is probably 
not far from the aggregate value of the properties sold at or about the 
time of sale. That the properties sold may not be representative of 
all the properties within a given class or district 1s another factor, 
which will be considered as occasion arises. 
APPRAISALS 
Complete studies of taxation in selected localities were made for 
the purpose of obtaining specific knowledge of all phases of the subject 
for typical forest communities in different regions of the United States. 
The more intensive of these studies involved appraisals of all the rural 
real estate within the selected districts. These studies covered 15 
townships or parts of townships in Minnesota, 9 towns in Wisconsin, 
and 3 towns in New Hampshire. One of the uses of these appraisals 
is to permit the calculation of assessment ratios by various significant 
groups. Some comment on the nature and reliability of these apprais- 
als is called for at this point. 
The appraisals in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the town of Loudon, 
N. H., were of an extensive character. Those in Minnesota and 
Wisconsin were based on comparisons with values established in recent 
transactions, and those in Loudon, N. H., primarily on individual 
appraisals after these had been checked by sales. The values of the 
individual properties obtained by these extensive methods are such 
as would be derived by taking an. average price in unbiased sales of a 
considerable number of quite similar but not identical properties and 
applying to each that average price, ignoring the minor differences 
which distinguish them one from the other and which give each a true 
value different from the average though within reasonable limits of it. 
For this reason any attempt to show how much or how little the 
assessed values of individual properties vary from the average 
appraised values found for them would fail of its purpose. However, 
when aggregated by large enough groups, such appraisals are likely 
to be reliable, since the minor differences tend to offset each other. 
The appraisals in the towns of Fremont and Richmond, N. H., 
were made more intensively. Every property was separately 
appraised by two experts temporarily attached to the Forest Service 
for this purpose through the cooperation of the New Hampshire State 
Tax Commission. These men were experienced in making official 
reappraisals for the State tax commission, and the results obtained 
may be assumed to be those which would have been obtained in an 
official State reappraisal and as close to true value as could be expected 
without tax maps or systematic study of valuation data collected over 
a period of years for the towns in question. 
