When a real estate attorney calls me about a date-of-death appraisal, the date is usually within the last 12 months. Probate is open, the basis question is fresh, and the comparable sales are still warm in the MLS.
But every year, I get calls where the date of death is two, five, or even fifteen years in the past. The IRS opened an audit. The estate was administered without a proper valuation. A trust funded with real property never got a defensible cost basis. A sibling sold the inherited home, and the basis dispute is now on a CPA’s desk. Suddenly, somebody needs a value as of a date the calendar has long since moved past.
That work is called a retrospective appraisal, and it is one of the more demanding assignments a residential appraiser takes on. It also happens to be exactly the kind of work the SRA designation was built for.
What a retrospective appraisal actually is
A retrospective appraisal develops an opinion of market value as of a prior effective date. The report itself is written today, but the value conclusion reflects what the property was worth then, based on what the market was doing at that time, using only the information a reasonable buyer and seller would have had access to at that point in time.
The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) explicitly contemplates this. The effective date of the appraisal and the date of the report may differ. What USPAP requires is that the analysis stays disciplined: no hindsight, no data the market did not yet have, and a clear explanation in the report of how the retrospective analysis was performed.
That discipline is the part that trips up appraisers without experience in this kind of work.
When estate attorneys need one
A few of the scenarios that send a retrospective assignment my way:
A late-filed Form 706 where the original administrator never obtained a qualified appraisal, and the IRS is now asking for a defensible basis. A property held in an irrevocable trust where the funding-date valuation was thin or missing, and a successor trustee needs it cleaned up. A capital gains dispute over the sale of an inherited home: the heirs used the county assessor’s value; the IRS pushed back; and now the CPA needs a retrospective opinion of fair market value as of the date of death. A litigation matter in which the valuation date is locked by court order to a prior date, often years before the case was filed. A trust or estate administered out of state where the original valuation does not meet IRS qualified-appraisal standards and needs to be redone.
In every one of those situations, the appraisal is not optional, and the date is not negotiable. The IRS, the court, or the trust document dictates the effective date. The appraiser’s job is to deliver a credible value as of that date, today.
Why this work is harder than a current appraisal
Two big challenges and a smaller one.
The data is no longer in your normal pipeline. I cannot just pull the last six months of comparable sales in REcolorado the way I would for a current assignment. I have to roll the MLS back to the effective date, filter for sales that had actually closed by then, and then verify each one through county records. The MLS history is there, but you have to know how to query it correctly, and you have to be careful about distinguishing between an active listing and a closed sale on the effective date.
The subject’s condition on the effective date is rarely current. A home that was tired and outdated fifteen years ago might be fully renovated today. A roof and kitchen put in five years ago do not exist for purposes of the value opinion as of ten years ago. I work with whatever photographic evidence, prior listing records, permit history, insurance records, and family recollections the attorney or executor can provide, and the report must be transparent about the basis for the assumption of the condition.
Market context has to be reconstructed. A 2015 Boulder market and a 2025 Boulder market are not the same animal. Interest rates, inventory, days on market, neighborhood trajectory, and buyer pool all shift. The narrative in a retrospective report needs to describe the market that existed on the effective date, not the one outside the appraiser’s window today.
Why a qualified appraisal matters more here, not less
The IRS publishes specific requirements for what counts as a qualified appraisal and a qualified appraiser for estate and gift tax purposes. Treasury regulations require that the appraiser hold a recognized professional designation, demonstrate verifiable education and experience in valuing the type of property at issue, and follow generally accepted appraisal standards.
A retrospective opinion built on a Zillow snapshot, a broker price opinion, or an old county assessor figure will not survive a serious challenge. Neither will an appraisal from a generalist who treated a 2014 effective date the same way as a 2026 effective date.
This is part of why I built VolkHaus around the SRA designation and direct work with estate attorneys, CPAs, and fiduciaries. The complex assignments are not the ones I avoid. They are the ones I built the practice to handle.
What I need from you to start a retrospective assignment
If you have a matter where the date of valuation is more than a year in the past, the conversation usually moves faster if you can send me, in advance:
The exact effective date and the legal reason for that date (date of death, gift date, trust funding date, court order, sale date in dispute). The property address and any prior valuation reports, listing history, or assessor records you already have. Any photos, permit history, or insurance records that establish the condition as of the effective date. The intended user and intended use of the report (IRS filing, court testimony, trust accounting, basis support for a CPA).
From there, I can quote a fee, confirm the timeline, and let you know upfront if the data record is thin enough to require any extraordinary assumptions in the report.
The bottom line for attorneys
Retrospective appraisals are a real and recurring need in estate, trust, and litigation work. The further back the date, the more the case for a credentialed, experienced residential appraiser. If you have a file sitting on your desk where the value question has been deferred because the date of death feels too old to deal with, it is almost certainly not too old. It is just specialized work.
If you have one of those files, send it over. Happy to take a look and tell you what is realistic.
About the author
Charles E. Volk, SRA, is the principal of VolkHaus Appraisals in Denver, Colorado. He holds the SRA designation from the Appraisal Institute, has 24 years of residential appraisal experience across Colorado and the western United States, and serves on the Board of the Colorado Chapter of the Appraisal Institute. He works with estate attorneys, CPAs, fiduciaries, community banks, and private clients throughout Denver Metro and Boulder County.