The Appraisal Institute Property Use Classification System (PUCS) is a uniform classification system of the potential uses of real estate, including property use descriptions. The PUCS was developed by the Appraisal Institute to support a wide range of applications throughout the real estate industry and global economy, including within information systems used by appraisal firms and support systems that supply products and services to the real estate industry. This includes software programs and database management systems used by real estate appraisers and appraisal firms. Use and implementation of PUCS will support advanced analysis by real estate appraisers and improve consistency in real estate valuations throughout the world. 

PUCS builds from the Appraisal Institute Commercial Data Storage Standard (CDSS), which was developed in 2003 and is used by many information systems supporting the appraisal profession today. PUCS was developed by a Project Team that considered comments from several hundred practitioners during the exposure draft period.

Specifically, PUCS contains the following three levels of property use classification: (1) Property class; (2) Property type; and (3) Property subtype. PUCS expands the number of property classes from 13 to 18 and incorporates an expansive number of property types and property subtypes inclusive of the hundreds of property types that appraisers regularly value, including newly developed uses such as energy generation, rock-climbing facilities, recycling centers, waste transfer stations, and intermodal use. 

The Appraisal Institute makes no representations, guarantees or warranties regarding the use of the Property Use Classification System (PUCS) and does not assume any responsibility or liability for any use or reliance upon PUCS or for any data, analysis or work product resulting from any use or reliance upon PUCS.

PUCS v. 1.0 is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution- NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-ND).

View PUCS v.1.0 (Excel)

View PUCS v.1.0 (PDF)