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the value of the piers should be counted in determining a value
for the Canal.
Second, petitioners’ expert’s method of valuing the strip of
land between the ordinary water level and the high water mark of
the Canal is flawed. It appears that the figure used for the
total sales prices of all 28 lots, $368,900, included multiple
sales of the same lots. This would skew the average.8 Further,
petitioners’ expert provided no convincing rationale for his
determination that the value of the strip of land could be
determined by taking 15 percent of the combined fair market
values of the 28 lots and allocating it to the amount of their
waterfront footage. Thus, his use of the 85-percent discount
appears to be arbitrary. We accordingly reject this portion of
his analysis.
The most significant problem with the valuation of
petitioners and their expert is the proposition that the strip of
land between the water’s edge and high water mark of the Canal
had significant value at all. Petitioners’ expert valued the
strip at $55,334. However, petitioners’ expert conceded that the
strip, which he estimated varied in width from 7 to 15 feet, and
8 For instance, if each of the lots were sold twice, then
the total sales prices would have been with respect to twice the
waterfront footage, which would mean (other things being equal)
that each waterfront foot was half as valuable as petitioners’
expert calculates.
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