Over the past 15 years, lodging appraisals have become an important component of most mortgage applications and investment analyses.

Lodging appraisals demand some unique approaches. How, for instance, can you determine the value of a hotel management contract?

Hotel appraisals and market studies generally come with their own language. This month's column will be devoted to defining some of those often used and sometimes misunderstood expressions.

Estimating the value of a hotel is one of the mos difficult appraisal assignments. Transient lodging facilities represent not only real estate investments but going businesses as well.

Today's hotel market is in a state of chaos. The overbuilding of the 1980s coupled with the recession of the 1990s has sent hotel occupancies in many parts of the country plummeting.

Economic life is the period when improvements to a property contribute to property value. Hotels and motels have a definite life span of positive cash flow.

An allocation of a hotel's value between land, improvements and personal property is sometimes required to establish depreciable tax basis, property tax appeals, and for other similiar reasons occasioned by the sale or continuing operation of the pro

As more lodging properties run out of operating capital and are forclosed upon by their lenders, it becomes increasingly important for hotel buyers, sellers and lenders to understand the techniques utilized in valuing distressed facilities.

While working on a property tax appraisal for a 500-room downtown Sheraton hotel, we were confronted with a comparable sale which, on the surface, did not support our opinion that the subject property was overassessed.

In the October 1986 issue of The Apprasial Journal, Anthony Reynolds, MAI, wrote an article for the Notes and Comments section entitled "Attributing Hotel Income to Real Estate and to Personalty." His comment eessentially focused on an article that