Probate Retrospective Valuation

njbhorn

Hi,

I am helping my father-in-law sell his property and although we have 3 valuations of the property our solicitor has informed us that the valuations need to be at the time of the death of his partner my mother-in-law.

Alas we have now instructed one of the agents and they were enot keen and suggested it would be worthless for them to value the property at the time of death (Oct 13). Equally to go back to the other 2 agents who we have not chosen is not likely to be met with much co-operation.

So it is my intention to got to a surveyor to do this - I am currently waiting for a couple of them to get back to me. Does this sound the best way to do this to keep solicitor and more importantly HMRC happy as well as keep the sale ticking over?

Plus any idea on what cost this retrospective valuation should be based upon?

Any advice or pointers gratefully received.

Regards

Nigel

When_the_going_gets_tough

Hi your solicitor needs a valuation at the date of death for probate and IHT purposes.Surveyors are well used to providing valutions at different dates so there will be no problem with this but you will need to pay. However is there any IHT issue - if not you could probably manage with an informal valuation - ie see what they are valued now and deuct a bit depending on what the property market is doing round you - it's not an exact science!

00ec25

the estate agent(s) at the moment presumably think there is a good possibility you will place the sale with one of them so they have an incentive to give a (current) valuation

asking them for historical value makes it plain that there is no link with its sale and so less incentive. Did you use the magic words probate value when you asked them? My EA charged me £100 for providing a written valuation as he know I was not selling so he get no commission from his valuation work although that was not retrospective

as you have now started down the surveyor route that is the better way to go anyway as they will be sharper with retrospective numbers

njbhorn

Thanks people. Indeed the probate word was mentioned and one of the agents said prices having been changing at about 1% per month where we are.

Reading up about our friends at HMRC and IHT it seems the Surveyor is the best route.

I love the fact that there is no guarantee that HMRC will not demand a cut of any gain between time of death and market sale. I assume this is in case the valuation has been made to look low for one reason or another and the final sale is massively different?

Regards

Nigel

johnnyredgate

My father's house sold nearly a year after his death, the Inland Revenue valuation office just used the actual sale price figure and then made the adjustment to give a value at the date of my father's death, so I wouldn't think that you would need to appoint another valuer to do this necessarily. They were not interested in the agents valuations as the property was actually being sold. Hence I would think they would have figures to make the adjustment from a valuation today, but you may find that you should wait to get the actual sale price for the calculation to be based on, if not it is likely that it would have to be adjusted once sold if there is any difference in the valuation to the actual sale price.

njbhorn

Having spoken to a surveyor today his advice was sell property and have conversation with HMRC and come to some agreement. His charge was £800 so suggested you could spend this money and still be liable for the value it sells at.

So going ahead with sale and dealing with HMRC after sale.

Thanks for help all.