OT: Cost of land appraisal?

Dealing with an estate, a recent death requires a land appraisal from a certified appraiser. I have never dealt with this in my life so it is all new to me. I am kinda shocked at the cost. $10 per acre for farm land plus flat fee for home of $450 and another flat fee for a vacant building lot of 1 acre. Does that sound high?

"Professionals" get paid, it's as simple as that. From my experience, it would be a lot more here, and the land worth a whole lot less.

I paid $1000 for an appraisal of 40A of tillable farm land, no buildings or improvements, December 2015. Hope this helps.

two years ago my neighbor past away, family paid an appraiser to appraise 60 acre farm and homestead ,farm sold for 80,000.00 more than the appraisal. lawyer handled the sale and kept asking each interested party if they would care to bid more until no one was willing to outbid the other. appraiser was virtually paid for no good reason.

the land needs to be appraised so the value of the estate can be determined. If you inherit the land, this new value becomes your cost basis. This means if you sell it in 5 years, you only have to pay tax on the gain since you inherited it. Yes it costs money, but it in the end it helps you.

we bought a farm 2 years ago (200 acres, buildings). It seems the appraisal was in the $2500-3k range if I remember right. That would be pretty close to what your guy is asking.

it is a license to steal ,.banks require them for loan ,. and inheritance taxes must be paid ,.and the prices stated are common in sounthern ind , noyt just anyone can doit ,. you got to hacve credentials and so called credibility

my son went to the bank to refinace the house we have the morgage on with him.i told him he'll probably need an appraisal. bank thought he had enough equity in the house, they'll do a drive-by, instead of appraisal

How many acres? 10 bucks an acre isn't too bad for a 5 acre tract, but it would be outrageous for a half section of wheat ground.

All I can say is, if he hasn't done the appraisal yet, get another quote or two. Otherwise, pay up and count it as a lesson learned.

It sounds high to me but I know where you are makes a difference. The last one I had done was 8 years ago on 160 acres. At that time it was about $350 total.

Some real estate agents may have the credentials to do a proper appraisal, and may do one for less than that quote. Ben

If the appraisers prices sound high you should get quotes from several other appraisers in your area.

The $450 for a house appraisal is in the ballpark if you need a certified appraisal. It takes time to look over a house, note features and take pictures, look up three recent comparable home sales of similar size age and location, note the differences in features, assign prices to those differences and write up a report. A realtor's appraisal is more likely to start with a quick seat of the pants guess that is within 25%, skewed higher if he is trying to impress the seller and get the listing, then pull up the data on homes in that price range regardless of the age, size, location or features, without any detailed comparisons.

Certainly get other quotes, however for your purpose that is about right I think. I have seen an appraisal done for estate purposes and it was far more detailed than a typical market valuation for loan purposes. The one I saw for a 600 acre farm was a thick spiral bound document that included every building permit issued, history of ownership, aerial photos and surveys going back 60 years, perhaps 50 photos of the property, and detailed sales history of similar properties sold within the previous 10 years, including a detailed description of how the appraised property compared with the sold properties. They also got DVD's with all the same material. A lot of work to make sure it stands up to any detailed scrutiny.

It does seam a little high. I went through that a while back. It isn't real hard to come up with a price. All that is needed is to see what land sold for around the same area. Maybe I'm missing something? Stan

An appraisal is just someone's opinion, doesn't really mean anything. Real estate appraisers usually will come up with what ever the bank or seller wants for the property.The appraisal from and estate makes sure the court and Lawyers get there share without doing any work.They charge the public a lot more than the real estate agents they usually work for.

wow,
We have to get an appraisal every time our loan rolls over on our commercial property.
In 2010 it was 14 grand, last moth 6g's

(quoted from post at 15:54:26 12/21/16) An appraisal is just someone's opinion, doesn't really mean anything. Real estate appraisers usually will come up with what ever the bank or seller wants for the property.The appraisal from and estate makes sure the court and Lawyers get there share without doing any work.They charge the public a lot more than the real estate agents they usually work for.

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The appraiser who did the appraisal on my house refinance used a fairly rigorous method of determining the value, comps, sq footage calculations, etc. It wasn't just SWAG or biased by one party or the other. I was impressed.

This depends on who needs the appraisal.

If it is for some interested parties that are going to squabble about it all, then that is a fair price. There is gonna be issues anyhow, might as well have a high dollar person in on the action from the start. You need someone with a lot of,paperwork hanging on the wall for those issues.

If this is to make some govt forum complete and all interested parties don't care/ already agree to a value of about what the tax valuation is anyhow; then it is highway robbery and you can likely find much cheaper way, such as auction company to do a drive by appraisal for you, and sign their name for a couple hundred bucks.

Paul

I guess I should have added, its 160 acres in two close together parcels and an almost worthless house.

OUCH! 1600 bucks to appraise two tracts of land!

If there are no improvements, it shouldn't take any more time to appraise 160 acres than it would 10 acres.

Assuming you haven't already contracted with the appraiser, I think you need to re-think your requirements. Do you really need a certified appraisal?

I can think of three reasons an executor needs to get an appraisal:
1. Property valuation for estate tax purposes. Well, clearly its under the federal exemption, no need for an appraisal.
2. Property valuation in order to determine the new cost basis for future capital gains. As long as the new cost basis sounds reasonable, the IRS isn't going to come back and question the appraised value at death.
3. One of the heirs wants to keep the property, and the remaining heirs think the property is worth more than he does. This is the sticky one.

When splitting up inherited property, getting an certified appraisal SHOULD ensure that everyone is equally unhappy. Of course it also means there's that much less cash in the estate after the appraiser is paid. But there are other ways to settle it without an appraisal. One way is to just put the property up for auction and let the heirs bid for it on the open market. Since there's probably not enough property to justify an auction, instead it can be put up for sale at the highest price the heirs think it's worth; if it doesn't sell for full price after six months and there are no offers greater than what one of the heirs is willing to pay, it goes to the heir that wants the property at the price he's willing to pay.