- 60 -
The amount of time that a hypothetical broker would need to
dispose of assets is a factual question. In Estate of Van Horne v.
Commissioner, supra at 742, the Court found no blockage where stock
could have been sold in small blocks without depressing the market
"over a comparatively brief period of, at most, several weeks".
Earlier, the Court in du Pont v. Commissioner, 2 T.C. 246, 253, 257
(1943), a Court-reviewed Opinion, valued a large block of stock based
on market conditions existing over a 90-day period. The Court of
Appeals for the Second Circuit has indicated that the price that
could have been obtained for a block of stock if the block had been
liquidated over a 10-day period, without activity to develop the
market, failed to establish the taxpayer's entitlement to a blockage
discount. Richardson v. Commissioner, supra at 104.
All in all, we believe that 6 months is the most time that a
hypothetical broker should be given to dispose of the apartment
complexes before a market absorption discount will inhere in their
fair market value. The appraisers assumed that each complex had to
be marketed for 18 months in order to be sold, and they factored this
18-month period into their appraisals. Although the appraisers knew
of the presence of all three complexes, we do not believe that the
appraisers meant for this 18-month period to be the period of time in
which all three complexes would sell. We believe it would take
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