As the year comes to a close and you contemplate the services you may need in the coming months, you may wish to consider combining tax services with appraisal services to make the most of your charitable contributions.

In this post, we will explore the advantages of professional appraisal services and walk you through the questions you should ask before hiring someone.

At Probity Appraisal Group and The Green Mission Inc., our team of appraisers are credentialed experts in their respective fields. They are USPAP compliant and hold accreditations from one or more of the three credential granting appraisal associations. Several hold advanced degrees and all have extensive experience in their fields. Their opinions of value are legitimized by extensive research, decades of knowledge, and connoisseurship that has earned them a place amongst a handful of experts in their field.

Although real estate appraisers must be licensed by the state, personal property and art appraisers are not regulated in this manner.

Because of this lack of licensing, anyone may hold themselves out as an appraiser, and many charlatans do. These scam artist appraisers have learned they can fleece unsuspecting clients out of hundreds of dollars an hour by purporting to have legitimate knowledge without any of the credentials legitimate appraisers possess, and by turning out work so shoddy is does not meet the minimum criteria for an IRS defined “Qualified Appraisal.”

Unfortunately, clients do not learn of the unqualified appraiser and the unqualified appraisal they produce until they have paid for useless work. Here are a few things these appraisers have in common:

• 1
  They tend to offer prices 50% to 90% lower than legitimate services. You will pay for this “bargain” many times over. Or, the fees are equivalent to a well-researched and documented appraisal but, given the work product, you may be paying close to $1,000 an hour for the final product.
• 2
  Their “reports” are far too short, with no descriptions, no research, no comparable sales cited with inclusion of the comparable sales data, and no solid facts to present to the IRS to justify their values.
• 3
  They do not display the credentials of one of the three personal property appraisal organizations who sponsor The Appraisal Foundation.
• 4
  They claim to be USPAP certified instead of USPAP compliant.
• 5
  They take only a few hours to do an entire household inventory.
• 6
  They claim their years in business alone qualifies them for appraisal work and have no experience or additional credentials.
• 7
  Their “reports” have descriptions like “orange sofa-$10,000”
• 8
  They tend to get clients audited by the IRS, because “orange sofa-$10,000” is not anywhere near adequate for tax purposes.

Many clients seeking an appraiser for the first time are not aware of these scams, and they hire based on price. They end up paying that price on top of the price for the legitimate appraisal after they get burned and have to do it all over again.

If somebody tells you they have worked in the business, do not have verifiable formal training, lack a college undergraduate or graduate degree in an applicable subject area, and they give you a bargain price for a quick appraisal on your entire estate, run!

If someone hands you an appraisal report with a two-to-three-word description of your items and a column of prices, demand your money back and call us.

We provide an initial inventory review and estimated appraisal value range at no charge.

Please contact Jennie Lumpkin to get started: Jennie@ProbityAppraisal.com, (540) 322-3884