2019 Summer Newsletter

PROFESSIONAL DESIGNATION SPOTLIGHT

Name: Neil ‘Nick’ Nikkinen

County: Marion

Position: Assistant Property Appraiser

Describe your appraisal/assessment experience. I’ve always loved real estate. I started selling real estate in central Florida in 1985. Working with buyers and sellers to find that perfect property was very satisfying. It could be very challenging at times, but always satisfying! Around the same time, I began appraising property under my real estate salesman license. I prepared eminent domain appraisals for local taxing au- thorities when they wanted to widen a road or buy land for a park. When the government has the legal authority to condemn private property, accurate

Neil ‘Nick’ Nikkinen, MAI, CAE, AAS, CFE

appraisals are essential. I strove to provide the most fair and equitable appraisal I could for all par- ties involved. Occasionally, the parties did not agree and I had to testify in circuit court as to the val- ue I arrived at and damages I estimated. In 1992 I became a Florida State-Certified General Real Estate Appraiser and began working with an appraisal firm and prepared commercial appraisals for lending institutions to secure mortgage loans. I did that for a few years until being offered a job at the Hernando County Property Apprais- er’s office as the Director of Commercial Properties and GIS Mapping in 1995 for the Honorable Les Samples. This job offered an exciting challenge moving from single property appraisal to mass ap- praisal modeling. Over the next 15 years in Hernando County I was promoted to Chief Deputy over- seeing daily office operations and Director of Special Projects charged with developing a countywide enterprise GIS mapping system and a central addressing department. This system has evolved to be one of the preeminent in central Florida. In 2009 I remarried and moved to Ocala, Florida the “Horse Capital of the World”. I ended my ser- vice to Hernando County in 2010 attempting to find a calling closer to my Ocala home. This was a time period of economic rebuilding after the Great Recession and since the Honorable Villie Smith wasn’t hiring in Marion County, I accepted the position of Director of Real Property Assessment in Putnam County for the Honorable Tim Parker. I served Putnam County for three years before ac- cepting an offer from the Honorable Rick Singh in Orange County to be his Deputy Director of Real Estate Assessment. After seven years of working out of the county that I called home, in 2016 I had the opportunity to join the Marion County Property Appraiser’s office as one of the Assistant Property Appraisers. My focus for the time in Marion County has been in commercial valuation and the stratification and mass modeling of commercial land. I am fortunate to work with a great team of people who know the history of Marion County properties and use that knowledge to develop fair and equitable assess- ments. As always in my career, the task has been challenging at times, but always very rewarding!

Why did you pursue the CAE designation?

Obtaining the CAE was a natural progression from the MAI as it is similarly the highest designation available for mass appraisal as the MAI is for single property appraisal. The reciprocity process that IAAO has adopted to confer designations for similar privately held designations is seamless and ex- tremely beneficial.

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Summer 2019 Newsletter of the FCIAAO