A broker opinion of value, often called a BOV, sometimes a broker price opinion or opinion of value, is a written estimate of what a property would trade or lease for, prepared by a broker from market evidence. It is the document that decides whether a deal is worth an hour of anybody's attention, and it is produced thousands of times a day in US commercial real estate.
It is also the document most often handed over as a number with a logo on it. This page is about the difference between those two things.
A BOV is not an appraisal, and the two are not interchangeable; that distinction, and when you need the regulated document instead, is set out in broker opinion of value and appraisal. What follows is about the BOV itself: what belongs in one, and how to read the one on your desk.
The sections a usable BOV contains
The value conclusion, stated as a range with a point estimate. A single number with no range hides how much disagreement the evidence actually contains. A range of plus or minus two per cent on a thin comp set is not credible; a range of plus or minus twenty on a dense one is evasion.
The method, named. Sales comparison, income capitalisation, replacement cost, or a weighting of them. If more than one method was used, the weighting and the reason for it belong on the page.
The comparable set, each comp identified and dated. Address or parcel identifier, transaction date, price, size, and the basis on which it is comparable. A comp table without dates is unusable: a sale from eighteen months ago and one from last month are not the same evidence.
The adjustments, shown rather than asserted. Location, size, condition, tenancy, timing. The reader should be able to take the raw comp, apply the printed adjustments, and land on the adjusted figure the document used. If they cannot, the adjustment column is decoration.
An income approach wherever the asset produces income. Rent roll summary, in-place versus market rent, operating expenses, the net operating income the value rests on, and the capitalisation rate applied, with a statement of where that rate came from. A cap rate that appears without provenance is the single most common place a BOV quietly becomes a guess.
An explicit as-is versus as-stabilised split. These are different numbers and conflating them is how BOVs mislead honestly. If the document offers a stabilised value, it must also state what has to happen for stabilisation to occur, and over what period.
The assumptions that would move the number. Vacancy, lease-up timing, capital expenditure, zoning or entitlement risk. A short list of the three or four things that would change the conclusion materially is worth more to a reader than another page of market narrative.
How to judge one you have been handed
Ask one question: can I rebuild the conclusion from what is printed here?
Take the comps, apply the adjustments, weight them as the document says it weighted them, and see whether you arrive at the stated value. Do the same on the income side: net operating income divided by the stated cap rate should reproduce the income-approach figure. If the arithmetic does not close, something is being carried by assertion.
Three further checks that cost a minute each:
- Are the comps real and current? Every comp should be findable from what the document gives you.
- Is the subject described from record, not from memory? Lot area, building area, year built, zoning district and owner of record all exist in the county record and should match it.
- Does the document say what it does not know? A BOV that admits a thin comp set or an unverified rent roll is more useful than one that does not, because you know where to spend your own time.
Where software helps, and where it does not
The mechanical part of a BOV is assembling the comparable set, pulling the parcel and zoning record, normalising rent rolls and trailing-twelve operating statements, running the arithmetic, and carrying a source next to every figure. That is work a machine does faster and more consistently than a person, and it is the part where human BOVs most often go wrong through haste rather than judgement.
The part that does not automate is the judgement about which comparables are genuinely comparable, and what the market is doing that the last six months of transactions have not yet shown. That is the broker's contribution, and a good tool should make room for it rather than bury it.
Titleman produces the mechanical part as a finished, paginated document where every figure carries the source it came from, so the reader can rebuild the conclusion instead of taking it on trust. The broker's own judgement stays visible as judgement, rather than mixed into the data.