About James Valdez

One Question: What Was It Worth on That Date?

Most families who call me have just been told by their CPA or attorney that they need a date-of-death appraisal, and they're not sure what it is or why. Here's the short version: when you inherit a home, its tax basis can "step up" to its value on the date of death. If your parents bought in 1990 and you sell today, that step-up can be the difference between a small tax bill and a very large one. The appraisal establishes that number, and it needs to hold up.

Tax questions belong with your CPA and legal questions with your attorney. My job is to give them a value they can rely on. That includes retrospective appraisals for dates long past; I've appraised effective dates back to the 1980s.

How I Learned This Work

I trained under a veteran appraiser roughly forty years my senior, in the era before appraisal management companies took over most of the business, when appraisers worked directly with attorneys, accountants and families. He handled every kind of assignment, including estate work, and I learned it alongside him, with microfiche and printed volumes of tax records before any of it was online.

Mostly, though, I learned by doing the work, getting it wrong, and coming back stronger. Date-of-death work is the closest thing left to that original way of practicing: a careful value for one client, with time to do it right.

Paired Sales as the Foundation, Not an Afterthought

Early in my career, some of my work was questioned, and I decided it would never happen again. So I went overboard. For a year or two in every market I worked, I did the paired sales on everything, even when the assignment didn't strictly require it. What's a busy street worth? Here are three pairs that show it. A pool? An ADU? A workshop? A finished garage versus one you park in? Sometimes it took an hour or more to find a single clean pair.

It was the slow way, but it built a database most appraisers don't have. I keep adding to it on every assignment, so it never stops growing.

It also changed how I appraise. Many appraisers let the square-footage adjustment do the heavy lifting and use it to absorb whatever the other adjustments miss. Markets aren't that clean, and that approach leaves a value open to questions. I work the other way around: paired sales set the foundation, and the square-footage adjustment is the fine-tuning at the end.

That's how I can support the properties that don't fit the mold: a finished attic in Oakland, an ADU in West Sacramento, two ADUs on one lot in Stockton, a neighbor's easement in Hayward, an unpermitted garage conversion in Novato, owned or leased solar, or a rural home with a barn in Contra Costa County that carries a Pleasanton address.

It also means I catch things families never thought to mention. A home across from a park, for example. Is that worth something? I look into it, and when the market says yes, it goes in the report.

Why the Details Matter

I don't review other appraisers' work often, but when someone asks me to look at a report, I usually find something: a report that never reconciled to a final value, which is a required step; a location difference a paired sale would have measured; two reports on the same home months apart with values that moved far more than the market did. Any of those can leave a value open to challenge. A complete, well-supported report is the whole point.

How I Work

• I see the property. I inspect every home I appraise and drive my comparable sales. For tax and estate work, you want the most credible, defensible value possible, and that starts with seeing the house.
• I measure, I don't assume. Adjustments come from paired sales, not rules of thumb.
• I document the date of death. When a home has changed since then, I establish its condition as of that date and state clearly what the value relies on.
• Every report is complete. Comparable sales from the right period, the property's prior sales, and a reconciled final value, as USPAP requires.
• I keep learning. Estate and retrospective courses are the first continuing education I take.

The Human Side

These calls come at a hard time. Sometimes a family member wants to talk a little longer, about the house or about the person who lived there, so I don't schedule my inspections tightly. There's rarely a rush with this work, and that gives me time to listen, and to explain how the appraisal works if they want to know. I genuinely enjoy that part.

Why I Build My Own Tools

In 2021 I was working sixteen-hour days, six days a week, for over a year. I knew there had to be a better way, so I taught myself to code.

Today I build the software behind my work. When I start an assignment, my tools search years of sales around your property for possible paired sales, pull in tax and location data, and check them against the research I've already saved for that city. What used to take me an hour of digging for one pair, I can now find, verify and document far faster, and the support goes straight into the report.

For you, that means two things: your appraisal is backed by more evidence than a typical report, and that depth doesn't come with a premium price, because I'm not starting from scratch on your property.

Where I Work

Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Francisco, San Mateo, Marin, Solano, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Santa Cruz and Monterey counties.

If your property is within two hours of the Bay Area, I'll drive to it, with no travel fee. You're not paying for the miles; you're paying for twenty years of research applied to your property.