My license reads California Certified Residential Real Estate Appraiser, and I have held it since 2004. In that time I have completed thousands of appraisals, testified as an expert witness in family-law and bankruptcy matters, and appraised properties ranging from studio condominiums to homes exceeding 10,000 square feet and $15 million in value.
What I Actually Do
I prepare specialty appraisals: date-of-death valuations and the step-up basis that follows from them, estate and trust reporting, gift tax, private party and intra-family transactions, divorce, bankruptcy, Proposition 19 transfers and assessment appeals. These are the assignments where somebody — the IRS, a probate judge, opposing counsel, a beneficiary — has a professional reason to scrutinize the number, and concentrating on them is how I have built the practice.
Date-of-death and estate work makes up the largest single share of what I do. Divorce and dissolution assignments are the next largest. Both are areas where the appraisal is not a formality collected for a file — it is evidence, and somebody usually has a reason to dislike the answer.
Credentials and Standing
My license is AR036053, issued by the California Bureau of Real Estate Appraisers, and I would genuinely encourage you to verify it independently before engaging any appraiser. Every report I prepare complies with the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice, which is the baseline the courts and the IRS expect and is not optional.
I carry the experience to be qualified as an expert in California Superior Court and have been so qualified repeatedly. That matters even on assignments that never reach a courtroom: an appraiser who writes with the possibility of cross-examination in mind documents adjustments rather than asserting them.
Why Experience Changes the Work
Two decades in the same markets produces something that cannot be substituted with software. I know which neighborhoods have comparable sales that look similar and are not, where an unpermitted conversion is common enough that the market has priced it, which view premiums are real and which are agent optimism, and how a county assessor's record diverges from what is actually standing on the lot.
It also produces judgment about scope. A good portion of my job is telling clients which product they need, and sometimes that means talking someone out of the cheaper report because it will not do what they need it to do. A desktop appraisal is excellent for many purposes and inadequate for others, and I would rather lose the order than deliver something that fails at the moment it matters.
How I Write Reports
A report that only an appraiser can follow has failed. My reports are organized so that an attorney, a judge, a CPA, an IRS examiner or a skeptical beneficiary can read the analysis and see how the conclusion follows from the evidence. Comparables are identified, adjustments are supported, the effective date is stated and justified, and the scope of work — including what I did and did not inspect — is disclosed plainly rather than buried.
If you disagree with a value I reach, contact me. If you can point to a comparable I should have considered or an upgrade the report missed, I will review it, and a justified correction costs you nothing.
Coverage
I perform full-service appraisals, including in-person inspection, throughout San Diego County and Riverside County — from the San Diego coast through the East County backcountry, across southwest Riverside County, and out into the Coachella Valley. Desktop and retrospective appraisals I prepare in all 58 California counties, which is how out-of-area estate and trust assignments are handled when a decedent's property sits in Sacramento or Modesto and the attorney is in San Diego.
The Other Sites
This is one of several sites I publish. brianward.com is the main company site. date-of-death.com is a statewide service devoted specifically to date-of-death valuations for single-family homes and condominiums. The appraiser behind all of them is the same person, and so is the license.