Estate & Date of Death Appraisals in Palm Beach & Broward County
Slater Appraisals, Inc. delivers retrospective, USPAP-compliant valuations tied to the exact date of death — prepared for the attorneys, CPAs, and courts that rely on them in West Palm Beach and surrounding South Florida communities.
Why South Florida Estates Require Extra Care with Date-of-Death Values
Palm Beach and Broward County real estate markets have moved sharply over the past decade — values in coastal ZIP codes, waterfront communities in Boca Raton and Delray Beach, and inland developments in Wellington and Boynton Beach can look dramatically different depending on which quarter you're measuring. That volatility makes the effective date on an estate appraisal especially consequential: a value pulled from the wrong month can overstate or understate the stepped-up basis by a meaningful margin, which ripples into future capital gains calculations when heirs eventually sell.
Florida's probate process runs through the circuit courts, and Palm Beach County's Fifteenth Judicial Circuit and Broward County's Seventeenth Judicial Circuit each handle significant estate caseloads. Executors and personal representatives filing an inventory with those courts — or supporting a federal Form 706 estate tax return — need a documented fair market value that will hold up to scrutiny. Homes in high-turnover coastal markets, age-restricted communities like those in Boynton Beach and Delray Beach, and golf-course properties throughout the county all require comparable sales pulled from the specific market window around the date of death, not current listings.
Slater Appraisals, Inc. maintains access to historical MLS data and county records going back well before recent market cycles, which makes it possible to reconstruct an accurate picture of what the market looked like on the day that matters — regardless of how conditions have shifted since.
What Makes a Date-of-Death Appraisal Stand Up to Review
Estate appraisals get reviewed by people whose job is to find problems: IRS auditors examining estate tax returns, co-beneficiaries who believe the number is wrong, and probate judges who need the methodology explained clearly. A report that survives that scrutiny is built differently than a standard market-value opinion prepared for a sale.
Every report from Slater Appraisals, Inc. states the effective date explicitly, documents comparable sales that closed within an appropriate window around that date, and explains market conditions as they existed then — not as they look today. Where the property's condition on the effective date differs from its current state (due to renovations, deferred maintenance, or post-death changes), the report addresses that directly using permit records, prior listing photographs, and information provided by the family or estate counsel.
The finished report is formatted to answer the questions that probate filings and estate tax returns generate, so the executor, attorney, and CPA receive a document they can file with and cite — not a starting point that requires follow-up explanation.
Common questions
- How far back can you appraise a property for a date-of-death value?
- There is no hard cutoff. Retrospective appraisals can be prepared for effective dates years in the past as long as historical sales data and county records from that period are available — and for South Florida properties, that data typically goes back well over a decade. The further back the effective date, the more the analysis relies on MLS archives and public records rather than appraiser recollection, but the methodology is the same.
- The estate attorney already filed a value with the court. Do we still need an appraisal?
- If the value was estimated rather than supported by a USPAP-compliant appraisal, the IRS or a co-beneficiary can challenge it. A documented appraisal with a defined effective date and comparable sales support provides the evidence needed to defend the number. If the filing is still open, an appraisal can be obtained and submitted; if it has already closed, an appraisal is still useful for establishing the stepped-up basis that heirs will use when they eventually sell.
- What if one heir is keeping the home instead of selling it — is an appraisal still needed?
- Yes, and it's often more important in that situation. When one beneficiary receives the property instead of a cash share, the other heirs need an objective value to confirm they received equivalent consideration. A neutral, documented appraisal gives all parties a number that reflects the market as of the date of death rather than anyone's estimate, which reduces the likelihood of disputes among beneficiaries after the estate closes.
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