Home/Property types
Most appraisals are a tract house with forty comparable sales down the road. The ones that need an appraiser rather than a form are the other kind — and across 84,380 closed sales in my four core counties, here is exactly how rare each of them is.
Published October 2026
Every appraisal website lists property types. It is a wall of words — waterfront, acreage, luxury, complex, manufactured, new construction — and the list tells you nothing, because any firm can type it.
So here is the same list with numbers attached. Each line is how often that thing actually appears in the market I work, measured from 84,380 closed single-family sales across Tarrant, Parker, Johnson and Hood counties over three years, and linked to the analysis I published on it.
| What the property has | Closed sales | Share of the market | What I have published on it |
|---|---|---|---|
| A swimming pool | 11,711 | 13.9% | What a pool adds |
| Any structure other than the house | 10,625 | 12.6% | What a workshop adds |
| An acre or more of land | 8,664 | 10.3% | What an acre is worth |
| 4,000 square feet or more | 3,717 | 4.4% | What features are worth |
| A price of $1,000,000 or more | 3,499 | 4.1% | — |
| A workshop or shop building | 2,749 | 3.3% | What a workshop adds |
| A guest house or accessory dwelling | 1,722 | 2.0% | What an ADU adds |
| Built before 1940 | 1,685 | 2.0% | Fairmount |
| Water frontage | 1,240 | 1.5% | — |
| Five acres or more | 976 | 1.2% | What an acre is worth |
| Solar generation | 962 | 1.1% | Owned versus leased |
| A barn | 561 | 0.7% | Barndominiums |
| Twenty acres or more | 109 | 0.1% | — |
| A home elevator | 5 | 0.006% | What an elevator is worth |
Read that column of percentages as a difficulty scale, because that is what it is.
A house with a pool is not a hard assignment. One sale in seven has one, so the market has already priced it and there are comparable sales in most subdivisions. A house on twenty acres is a different job entirely. There were 109 of them in three years across four counties. The nearest genuinely comparable sale may be in a different county and eighteen months old, and the adjustment for land is going to carry more of the value than the adjustment for the house.
This is also why an automated valuation collapses on exactly these properties. An automated model is a very good average of a large number of similar sales. When there are 109 sales, there is no average to take.
10.3% of sales sit on an acre or more. 1.2% on five acres or more. 0.1% on twenty or more.
Land is where most of the disagreement in a rural appraisal lives, for a reason that is easy to state and hard to solve: price per acre falls as the tract grows, and it does not fall in a straight line. A quarter-acre lot and a twenty-acre tract are not the same commodity in different quantities. Taking a per-acre figure from one and applying it to the other produces a number that is wrong by a margin large enough to matter to a tax bill or a settlement. I worked the shape of that curve out across the whole region in what an acre is worth around Fort Worth.
There is a data problem underneath it as well. The MLS acreage field is frequently populated with the square-foot figure instead — 6.6% of Hood County records, 7.6% of Tarrant, 13.2% of Johnson. Every lot size I work with is derived from the square-foot field for that reason, and it is the kind of thing that only shows up when you have checked.
Ag valuation sits on top of all of it. A tract carrying 1-d-1 open space valuation has a tax position that a buyer may or may not keep, and a rollback on change of use that belongs in the conversation before the number does.
1,240 closed sales out of 84,380 carried water frontage — 1.5%. Concentrated, not scattered: Granbury runs 13.2% and Azle 4.4%, against 1.5% in Arlington and 0.7% in Fort Worth.
The MLS carries water as a yes-or-no flag. That single field is standing in for frontage length, water depth at the bank, whether the bank is usable or a bluff, whether there is a dock and what kind, whether the lot fronts open water or a cove, and whether any of it is subject to a flowage easement or a lake authority’s rules. Two properties can both answer yes and be worth very different amounts.
So on a waterfront assignment the frontage gets measured and photographed, the dock gets described, and the comparable search is built on what the water actually is rather than on the flag.
An outbuilding appears on 12.6% of sales, and the detail inside that number is the useful part:
| Structure as the record describes it | Closed sales |
|---|---|
| Shed | 4,475 |
| Storage | 2,798 |
| Workshop with electric | 2,261 |
| Pergola | 1,020 |
| Outbuilding | 1,019 |
| Garage | 971 |
| Workshop, no power recorded | 959 |
| RV or boat storage | 730 |
| Outdoor kitchen | 628 |
| Guest house | 611 |
Note the two workshop lines. The record distinguishes a workshop with electrical service from one without, and that distinction is worth roughly double in contribution — which is the finding in what a workshop adds to a property. Everything else that matters about a shop is absent from the record entirely: the footprint, the eave height, the roll-up door dimensions, the slab, insulation, climate control, and whether any of it is finished.
None of that can be inferred from a listing. It gets measured on site or it gets guessed, and a guess on a 1,600-foot insulated shop with three-phase power is a large number to guess at.
Guest houses and accessory dwellings appear on 2.0% of sales, recorded as guest quarters, an ADU, a pool house or simply “other”. Whether the space is legal, permitted, separately metered and genuinely habitable changes what it contributes, and the field does not say. That is the subject of what a guest house or ADU adds.
Solar appears on 1.1%, and the first question is always ownership rather than output: an owned array and a leased one do opposite things to a transaction. Owned versus leased works through why.
| Property type | Closed sales | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Single family | 84,380 | 94.8% |
| Townhouse | 1,910 | 2.1% |
| Condominium | 1,239 | 1.4% |
| Mobile home | 670 | 0.8% |
| Manufactured home | 626 | 0.7% |
| Farm and ranch | 209 | 0.2% |
Townhouses, condominiums and manufactured housing together are 5.0% of the residential market here, and each of them breaks a different assumption.
A condominium is valued against its own building and its own HOA position, not against the detached houses around it, and the dues are part of the picture rather than a footnote — I went through that in Fort Worth condo HOA dues. Manufactured housing turns on whether the home has been affixed and the title surrendered, which is a legal question with a valuation consequence. And a barndominium is its own argument every time, because the market has not settled on whether it is a house with a shop attached or a shop with a house inside.
Two-to-four unit residential is within scope as well, valued on the income the units actually produce alongside the sales comparison.
A Texas Certified Residential credential covers one-to-four unit residential property of any value, and vacant or unimproved land whose highest and best use is one-to-four family residential. That is a real boundary and it has two edges worth being plain about.
There is no value ceiling. A $3,000,000 house on twelve acres is within scope. The credential is about property type, not price, and I have appraised more than $4 billion of residential property including valuations above $10,000,000.
Commercial property, apartment buildings above four units, and subdivision development analysis are outside it. If that is what you have, I will tell you on the phone and point you somewhere useful rather than take the assignment. You can check any of this yourself in about a minute, which is the subject of how to check who is actually appraising your house.
Whatever the property type, the person who takes your call is the person who inspects the house, does the analysis, writes the report and signs the certification. There is no trainee, no subcontracted inspector and no panel of unnamed appraisers. If you want to know who is doing the work before you hire anyone, ask for a licence number — mine is TX #1360232-CR — and look it up.
Yes, and it is one of the property types the public record describes worst. Water frontage appears on only 1.5% of closed sales across Tarrant, Parker, Johnson and Hood counties, concentrated in a few markets — 13.2% of Granbury sales and 4.4% of Azle sales against 0.7% in Fort Worth. The MLS carries water as a single yes-or-no flag standing in for frontage length, bank usability, dock, and whether the lot fronts open water or a cove, so those are measured and described on site rather than inferred.
Yes. 10.3% of closed sales in these counties sit on an acre or more, 1.2% on five acres or more and 0.1% on twenty or more. Acreage is the hardest part of a rural assignment because price per acre falls as the tract grows and does not fall in a straight line, so a per-acre figure taken from a small lot cannot be applied to a large tract. Ag valuation and the rollback on change of use are part of the same conversation.
Both. A barndominium is argued property by property because the market has not settled on whether it is a house with a shop attached or a shop with a house inside, and the published analysis is on the site. Manufactured housing turns on whether the home has been affixed to the land and the title surrendered, which is a legal question with a direct valuation consequence. Mobile and manufactured homes together were 1.5% of closed residential sales in these counties.
No. A Texas Certified Residential credential covers one-to-four unit residential property of any transaction value, so there is no price ceiling — I have appraised more than $4 billion of residential property including valuations above $10,000,000. The boundary is property type rather than price: commercial property, apartment buildings above four units and subdivision development analysis are outside the credential.
Commercial property, residential buildings of more than four units, and subdivision development analysis. Vacant land is within scope only where its highest and best use is one-to-four family residential. If an assignment falls outside that, I will say so when you call rather than take it, and you can verify the credential yourself through the TALCB licence search.
Usually, because it takes longer on site and longer to research — acreage, outbuildings and water frontage all have to be measured and described rather than read off a listing. I quote a written fee and a firm delivery date before any work begins, normally within one business hour, and the fee is never contingent on the value reported.
These figures describe how often property features appear in past transactions. They are not an opinion of value for any particular property and nothing here is an appraisal. Data supplied by NTREIS and believed reliable but not guaranteed; NTREIS does not warrant it and it may not reflect all market activity.
The shares above are base rates across the market. What they cannot tell you is what your particular property is worth — that takes looking at it. Written fee quote, typically within one business hour, and questions are free whether or not they turn into an assignment.
Would you rather not type it out? Call or text (817) 903-4509.