Had my hearing today. I filed my protest indicating they needed to lower it by $244K. A few days ago I received an informal settlement offer knocking off $96K. I rejected. While waiting this morning I was called up to the desk by an appraiser to go over my evidence. She explained something that I had interpreted incorrectly which gave me pause about the hearing itself. She said she would try to get me an updated offer before I got called back. She came back in a few minutes and they had upped their offer to $134k off the initial appraisal amount. I went ahead and took it since part of my rebuttal evidence was faulty. It was good timing as they called me back while I was reviewing this new offer. I didn’t want to chance it especially since I was seeing dejected face after face of folks leaving their hearing before me.
As a side not there were quite a few people waiting that did not appear to have much evidence. A page or two max. I had the aforementioned full 21 page report and they worked with me before the full hearing to resolve. The folks with minimal evidence did not get called up to discuss before being called back. All in all I think the $99 report helped.