Advice on Choices

Apartments

Choose "Apartment" if you want to find the value of any apartment building with more than two units. The Apartment track is for any building where most of the space is residential. Use this track for these:

• Three-family apartments
• Larger apartment complexes of any size
• Groups of three or more condominiums in a larger complex

Offices

Choose "Office" for any building where most of the space is used as offices. The "Office" track is a good choice for any of these:

• Large downtown or suburban office buildings
• Houses that have been converted to office use
• One-story industrial buildings where 70% or more of the space has been built out as offices
• Office buildings where part of the space may have been built out as classrooms or a day care center
• Medical offices
• Laboratories
• Single-occupant or multi-tenant buildings
• Office condominiums

Industrials

Choose "Industrial" for any building where most of the space is put to manufacturing or warehouse use. An industrial building usually has large areas of unfinished space (with concrete slab floors, bare walls, and exposed ceiling structure). Industrial buildings are usually located on roads where the traffic isn't heavy enough to support retail use. The "Industrial" survey is a good choice for these:

• Warehouses
• "Shop" buildings with low cost finishes
• One-story warehouse or manufacturing buildings with or without partial office build-out
• Buildings with office space on a mezzanine level
• Distribution buildings with large numbers of tailgate doors
• Cold storage and food processing buildings
• Older, multi-story loft buildings
• "Flex" buildings
• Industrial condominiums
• Single-occupant or multi-occupant industrial buildings
• Electric, plumbing, and HVAC supply houses on low-traffic roads
Auto repair garages that are on low-traffic streets are best valued as industrial buildings.

Auto repair garages that are on low-traffic streets are best valued as industrial buildings. Auto repair garages that are on high-traffic streets and that can be converted to retail buildings are better valued in a Retail survey.

Retail

Retail buildings can have a wide variety of occupants, each with a distinctive build-out. But when a space is capable of becoming a salon, a restaurant, or a bank branch, it is general retail space. The "Retail" track handles this kind of building. Retail space is usually on the ground floor, accessible from the sidewalk or a walkway in front, on a street with good vehicular or pedestrian traffic. Buildings with these uses are a good choice for the Retail track:

• Shopping centers
• Neighborhood multi-tenant retail strips
• Banks
• Restaurants, including fast food
• Hair and nail salons, bookstores, yoga centers, travel agencies, bakeries, and hardware stores
• Drug stores
• Convenience stores (without gas sales)
• Super markets
• Car dealerships
• Day care centers on main roads
• Single- or multi-tenant buildings
• Retail condominiums

Auto repair garages that are on main streets can be valued with the Retail survey. Auto repair garages on side streets are handled better with an Industrial survey.

Mixed Use

A mixed use building is any building where two or more uses (apartment, office, industrial, or retail) take up a significant part of the space. The most common mixed use building is the building with apartments above retail on the first floor. But a mixed use building can be any combination of the four primary building types (apartment, etc.). Choose "Mixed Use" and you will take a separate survey for each of the building types that are in the mix.

Other

Some property types do not fit any of these categories. They require specialized analysis and do not fit any of the Zaxia tracks. Among the property types for which Zaxia is not yet able to serve you are these:

• hotels
• gas stations
• places of worship (except those that take up part of the space in an office or industrial building, which we cover with those surveys)
• schools (again, except those that take up part of an office or industrial building)
• self storage warehouses
• land

Contact us.

If you want to discuss any of this or need help, call us at 1-857-880-7139. You can also reach out to us via email or contact form on our Contact page.