Date of Death Appraisals in the Bay Area

I'm James Valdez, a California certified residential appraiser. For 20 years I've appraised estate and date-of-death properties, starting as a trainee, and today I specialize in date-of-death and retrospective appraisals for estates, probate, trusts, and stepped-up basis.

I personally inspect every property I appraise and drive my comparable sales. There's no travel fee anywhere in my coverage area.

Call (510) 828-5876 Date of Death Appraisals

What Was It Worth on That Date?

When someone passes away and the family inherits a home, the CPA or estate attorney needs to know what the property was worth on the date of death. That is the one question I answer.

Every adjustment in my reports is supported by paired sales: real transactions showing what the market actually paid for a difference. Over my career I've built my own database of that research, city by city, and I add to it on every assignment.

Taxes belong with your CPA and legal questions with your attorney. My job is to give them a value they can rely on.

See my date-of-death appraisal service and coverage area → About James Valdez →

Appraiser Partners

AppraisersTech also hosts independent appraisers in other markets who specialize in estate and date-of-death work. Each partner is a licensed appraiser who inspects properties in their own area.

View appraiser partners →

Paired Sales Tools, Built by a Working Appraiser

Strong appraisal work already exists. It just doesn't scale. A single paired-sales conclusion can take hours to find, verify, and support, so most appraisers can't do it on every assignment.

I built tools to fix that for my own work: paste in comparable sales, surface likely paired sales, enrich them with tax and location data, and save the confirmed pairs to a database that becomes more useful with every assignment. Once the analysis is done, the support and narrative carry into the report instead of being retyped.

That's why my reports carry adjustments like $61,000 instead of a rounded $25,000. The number comes from specific paired sales, and the report says exactly which ones.

On one assignment, I supported an adjustment for a two-bedroom ADU with a paired sale just over a mile away. The support was strong enough that an underwriter called me to help explain it to the investor, something that hadn't happened once in 20 years.

How the Workflow Works

1. Paste in comps.
Start with the sales you are already analyzing for the assignment.
2. Identify potential paired sales quickly.
Surface likely market-support relationships without rebuilding everything manually.
3. Enrich the records.
Pull tax and location data so the database becomes more useful over time.
4. Reuse market support.
Build a growing paired sales database that becomes more valuable with every assignment.
5. Carry support into the reporting workflow.
Use the paired sales you select alongside Excel and TOTAL-based processes instead of fighting them.
6. Reduce typing and repetitive narrative work.
Let the worksheet structure do more of the lifting so the appraiser can stay focused on analysis.

These tools are in development for other appraisers. If you're an appraiser interested in paired-sales tools, contact me at jameskvaldez@gmail.com.

Need a Date of Death Appraisal?

Call or email to talk through the property, the effective date, and what the appraisal is for.

Call (510) 828-5876  ·  jameskvaldez@gmail.com