Periodic property evaluations?

A few years ago, I attended a leadership seminar sponsored by our property manager (and got a free steak dinner out of it!) The speaker was very good and he discussed a number of things board members should consider doing to improve their performance and their communities. Although I’m no longer on the board, I still like to collect ideas that might benefit our community and pass them along to the current group (whether they respond or not is up to them).

One suggestion was to select two homes at random and hire a realtor to do a property evaluation. The goal is to get a sense of where the community stands vs. other communities in the area. Since homeowners are always yapping about increasing property values, an evaluation would be a good way to see if X community is keeping up with the surrounding area. It could also help identify problems that the community needs to address (e.g. outdated landscaping).

The speaker suggested doing this every year, but given everything else that goes in in many communities (not to mention money issues), I would think if an association did this, a review every 2-5 years would be better. I know there are a lot of things that go into property values, most of which the association can’t control and the term "property value" by itself indicates they're subjective anyway. Nonetheless, I was wondering if anyone else has done something like this before and what you think of this idea. Thanks for your comments!