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Norway Parcel Review · norwayparcelreview.org
Calculate Building Grade per the State of Maine Guidebook
The Maine Revenue Services assessor-training manual, PT103 — Valuation of Real Estate, publishes a grading schedule for all ten components of a building and a worked method for averaging them. This page applies that schedule, and nothing else, to the building you describe.
Start from the card. If you opened this page from a parcel card, the Town’s 2026 figures for that parcel are loaded above. Choose the building row you are grading (the house, not the shed). If you came here directly, you can still grade any building — the card panel simply stays blank.
Walk the building with the ten boxes below. Each box is one PT103 component — foundation, basement, framing, roof, interior, exterior, floors, heating, plumbing, electrical — and each line inside it is a criterion the manual lists, with the manual’s own description for Grades 1 through 5. Every line starts at Grade 3, “average or expected construction.” Change only the lines you actually know; leave the rest at 3.
Use the alternate-type menu when it fits. A house on wood posts, sonotubes, or a frost wall with no basement is graded by the manual as a type, not by the five foundation criteria; pick it from the Foundation box’s alternate menu and the criteria below it are ignored.
Calculate. The result is the manual’s two-step average (p. 42): each component is averaged from its criteria, then the ten component averages are averaged again. The table shows every step so anyone can check the arithmetic.
Compare with the card, carefully. The card’s grade comes from O’Donnell & Associates’ own schedule, which runs on a different point scale (the Town’s 2026 pricing tables run from grade 1 to 10) and has no published written definitions. The two numbers are not interchangeable. What this page gives you is the State’s description of your building, criterion by criterion, in the State’s own words — evidence you can put beside the card, photograph by photograph, when you ask for a review.
Keep a record. “Copy summary” puts every selection and the result on your clipboard as plain text; “Print” gives you a dated page for your file. Then see How to argue condition and Putting it on paper on the main site.
What this tool actually is
It applies only the Maine Revenue Services PT103 training manual’s published grading schedules (Chapter 3, pp. 41–42 and 50–57) and the manual’s own averaging method. Every result is an estimate built from that one public document. It is not an official assessment, an appraisal, a measurement, or a substitute for the Town’s own record, and it is not legal advice.
Describe each component
Every criterion defaults to Grade 3 (average). Change only what you have information about.
Result
This estimate uses only the criteria selected above and only the PT103 schedule. It is not on the same scale as the O’Donnell & Associates card grade; the two use different point systems and cannot be read as equal numbers.