What is the public estate worth?

Governments are among the largest asset owners in the world. The public estate spans land, buildings, infrastructure, schools, hospitals and the equipment that keeps services running — yet many treasuries would struggle to say, with confidence, what it is all worth. That is not a trivial gap. Valuation underpins decisions about maintenance and disposal, the compensation paid when land is acquired for public purposes, and the credibility of government financial reporting. Consistent standards are what make those numbers defensible.

Why the public estate is hard to value

Public asset portfolios are unusually difficult to measure. They are vast and heterogeneous; many assets rarely, if ever, transact; and in many jurisdictions a significant share of land is unregistered, with no formal record on which a valuation can comfortably rest.

International guidance has begun to address this directly. UN-Habitat’s Valuation of Unregistered Land – A Practice Manual (2021) was designed for use in combination with the International Valuation Standards of the IVSC — recognition that even where formal title is absent, valuation can still proceed on a disciplined, transparent footing.

International reference points

Treasuries do not need to design a valuation framework from first principles. IVS is used as a framework in more than 100 countries, which gives governments a reference point that auditors, lenders and international partners will already recognise.

The policy world points the same way. The UNECE’s Policy Framework for Sustainable Real Estate Markets (2019) supports, in Principle 10, property valuation based on transparent asset appraisal criteria in line with international standards — citing IVS as an example. The principle is modest but pointed: transparency in how public and private assets are appraised is part of what makes a real estate market sustainable.

When the state must pay

Few valuation contexts are more sensitive than compulsory acquisition. When government takes land for a road, a railway or a utility, the legitimacy of the entire process rests on whether the compensation is seen to be fairly assessed.

Some jurisdictions have embedded international standards in exactly this setting. In Saudi Arabia, under the Accredited Valuers Law of 2012, every valuer in the Kingdom must be accredited by TAQEEM and follow its rules, which include IVS; the standards have been fully adopted since 2014 and are recognised in the implementing regulations of the eminent domain, commercial collateral, bankruptcy and companies laws. Whatever the jurisdiction, the underlying logic travels: when the state takes or charges property, the valuation behind the payment must withstand scrutiny.

Policy in motion

Other governments are working through these questions now. Kenya’s National Treasury has published a draft Government Assets Valuation Policy Framework for consultation, incorporating IVS as best practice. It sits alongside the Kenya Valuation Standards of the Institution of Surveyors of Kenya, through which Kenyan valuation practice is already aligned with IVS. The framework remains a draft, and the consultation is part of the point: a policy for valuing public assets earns legitimacy by being tested before it is adopted.

Questions a treasury can ask

For governments reviewing their own arrangements, a handful of questions surface most of the issues.