Orientation
Start with the appraisal, not the offer
An offer is a single number with no reasoning attached. The appraisal behind it contains every judgment that produced that number. Reading it in the right order tells you quickly whether the figure is defensible.
In order
How to work through what you have been sent
Get the complete appraisal report
Agencies frequently send a one page summary of the offer. That is not the appraisal. You are entitled to ask for the report itself, and in federally funded acquisitions you are entitled to a written statement of the basis for the offer. Without the report there is nothing to examine.
Find the valuation date
Condemnation values property as of a date fixed by law, usually the date of the taking or the filing of the petition. It is not the date the appraiser visited and it is not today. If the market moved between those dates, the difference matters.
Read the highest and best use conclusion
This is the single most consequential paragraph in the report. It states what the appraiser assumed the property could be used for. If it says the current use and the market would have paid for something else, the entire valuation is built on the wrong premise.
Check whether this is a partial taking
If the agency is taking part of your property, the report should contain a before value and an after value. If it contains only a value for the strip being taken, it has skipped the question of what the taking did to everything else.
Look for severance damages and cost to cure
These are the items most often omitted or understated. Severance damages compensate the loss in value to the remainder. Cost to cure is the expense of fixing a problem the taking created, and it is only valid where the cure actually restores what was lost.
Decide whether to get your own appraisal
If the reasoning holds up, the offer may be fair. If any of the steps above produced a question the report does not answer, an independent appraisal is the way to answer it. A second opinion is what makes a negotiation possible.
Then read
The pages that answer what you have just found
Fair Market Value
The legal definition, and what it deliberately leaves out.
Highest and Best Use
Why this conclusion decides the rest of the valuation.
Before and After Valuation
The method that governs every partial taking.
Severance Damages
Loss to the land you keep, and how it is proved.
Reading an Appraisal Report
Section by section, with what to question in each.
Appraisal Review
How a second appraiser critiques the first one.
A caution
What this site does not do
This site explains valuation. It does not give legal advice, it does not value your property and it cannot tell you whether to accept an offer. Those decisions depend on facts specific to your property and on the law of your state, which varies more than most owners expect.
Deadlines in condemnation are real and some of them are short. If a petition has been filed, or if an offer carries an expiry date, speak to a lawyer in your state before the date passes. Understanding the appraisal is useful, but it does not pause the clock.
Next: see how a condemnation appraisal is built
Once you know what you are looking at, the reasoning becomes much easier to question.