Property valuations for deceased estates and probate

Why the date of death is the date that matters

For a property the deceased acquired after 20 September 1985, the beneficiary is generally taken to have acquired it at its market value on the day the person died. That figure becomes the cost base, and every capital gains calculation on a later sale runs from it. Get it wrong and the error compounds into the eventual tax bill.

A valuation obtained today tells you what the property is worth today. It says nothing admissible about what it was worth on a date two years ago. That's why estates need a retrospective valuation — a formal assessment as at the date of death.

How a retrospective valuation is prepared

The method is the same as any market valuation, but the evidence base is historical. We inspect the property in its current state, establish what it was like at the valuation date from available records and your information, and then test the value against sales that settled around that date rather than recent ones.

Where the property has been renovated, damaged or subdivided since, that has to be identified and allowed for. This is the part automated estimates cannot do at all.

Valuing the estate for distribution

Separately from tax, an executor usually needs a defensible value simply to administer the estate — to distribute fairly between beneficiaries, to decide whether to sell or transfer, or to support a decision that one beneficiary takes the property and others are compensated.

An independent figure protects the executor. Where beneficiaries disagree, a valuation from someone with no interest in the outcome is much harder to challenge than a family estimate or an agent's appraisal.

• Establishing the cost base for future capital gains tax
• Distributing an estate fairly between beneficiaries
• Supporting an executor’s decision to sell or transfer
• Resolving disagreement about what the property is worth

Talk to your accountant as well

Inherited property can attract a full or partial main residence exemption depending on how the deceased used it, how the beneficiary uses it and when it's sold, and different rules apply where the deceased or the beneficiary is a foreign resident. Whether tax is ultimately payable is a question for your accountant or solicitor.

Our role is narrower and more definite: to establish what the property was worth on the relevant date, in a form the ATO will accept.

What we need to start

The property address, the date of death, and access details. Anything that describes the property's condition at that date helps — old listing photographs, the rates notice, renovation records, or a copy of the will or grant of probate where relevant.