During the early part of my career I worked full time for a major lender who had a large portfolio of REO properties they were selling on the open market. This lender needed to know the current market value of each property in its current condition and also its potential selling price after any required repairs. This lender also needed the market value at the time the original loan was placed on the properties. During my time with them I gained multiple years of experience providing an estimated current market value and the historical market value for the homes in their portfolio. This included hundreds of single family residential, estate size homes, condominiums and small unit apartments.

One of my clients required a historical appraisal of a single family home to establish its market value on the date of inheritance. This was step up basis appraisal that allowed my client to establish market value on the date of acquisition and correctly estimate capital gains taxes for the estate. The property had already been sold, so no interior inspection of the dwelling was possible. I was able to estimate the value of the property based on an exterior inspection, plus my client’s description of the home, photos provided during the recent listing of the property and public records. This allowed me to come up with an accurate historical appraisal for my client.

Recently, one of my client realized that three of their condominium properties had no historical step up basis appraisals on file. All three of these properties were acquired over 12 years prior, which made researching value difficult because multiple listing services typically limit their search engines to 10 years of past transactions. Using multiple methods, I was able to accurately appraise all three homes, allowing my client to establish value for each of these homes on the date of inheritance.