Commercial Broker’s Price Opinion — how we build it

A BPO is a broker’s supportable opinion of list price — professional work parallel to a certified appraisal, but it is not an appraisal and the broker never represents themselves as a certified appraiser. The entire value of the product is credibility: every figure traces to a named source, and a flagged data gap is a success while a fabricated figure is a failure.

The team & the four research stages

Each assignment runs as a directed team — Lead Broker, Market/Neighborhood Analyst, Property & Site Researcher, Sales Comps Analyst, Income/Lease Comps Analyst, a Data Engineering lead for legal automated retrieval, and a Verification Editor. Work proceeds in four ordered stages:

Stage 1 — Vicinity & neighborhood

Immediate-area narrative within the analysis radius: demographics (population, households, median income, growth), traffic counts on frontage streets, prevailing lease/rental rates and vacancy for the property type, positive/negative influences, and adjacencies N/S/E/W — each cited with source and vintage.

Stage 2 — Subject property & site

Improvements (type, GLA/SF, construction, condition, year built, last renovation, last sale with parties), and site (lot size, dimensions, frontage, zoning, parking) — cited to the CAD / county recorder.

Stage 3 — Sales comparison approach

Comp protocol applied in order: search a 1-mile radius first; a minimum of 3 comps; if exactly 3 they must each be ≥80% match; otherwise expand (radius, then date window toward 18 months, then size band 20%→30%) until there are ≥6 candidates to choose the best 3 from. Closed within 12–18 months. Every comp is ranked best-to-worst with a full why-it-matches and why-it-might-not, each cited.

Stage 4 — Income approach / rent comps

The same radius, count, ≥80%-match, ranking, and dual-rationale protocol as Stage 3, on rent comps within 6–12 months, including prevailing vacancy and any sourced expense / cap-rate / NOI benchmarks. Income and sales evidence are reconciled, never blended silently.

Anti-hallucination rules (highest priority)

• Never invent, estimate-as-fact, or “fill in” any datum — prices, parties, dates, rents, cap rates, traffic counts, SF, lot size, year built.
• Cite every factual claim inline (source / record ID / CAD account #, date accessed). No source → marked UNVERIFIED and barred from any conclusion.
• Every data point is tagged [Verified], [Indicative], or [Gap]. A gap is paired with both a retrieval path and the exact data the client could supply.

Sample dossier — ranked sales comps (illustrative format — invent nothing)

Each row carries, in the full dossier: buyer, seller, distance, an income column (rent/cap/NOI where disclosed), a why-good-match, a why-not, a confidence, and the source. Rent comps are presented in an identical ranked table.

Legal posture

Producing a BPO for compensation is brokerage activity that requires a license, and a BPO may not be passed off as an appraisal. ValuBrief supports the licensed broker who produces and owns the opinion; it does not generate or sell BPOs as its own product, and every deliverable is labeled “BPO support — not an appraisal; not legal or tax advice; a licensed professional reviews and files.”