You are already familiar with Real Estate Appraisers, they appraise real estate, your house and land, crops on the ground, buildings that are not mobile. A personal property appraiser appraises just about everything else. Her car, boat, Grandma’s Haviland, Suzie’s Barbies, tools, equipment, jewelry, furs, antiques, the ’41 Buick in the back storage building, crops after harvest, landscape plantings the keeper real estate agent forgot or didn’t notice, your furniture, tractors and bulldozers, horses and cattle. Everything is personal property, even your Rembrandt and your VanGogh, especially them.

Only? Of course, no.

Personal property appraisers work together for you, I handle antiques and residential contents, horses and those pesky garden plantings. Yes, that means trees and shrubs that you spent a lot of money on and should be able to add their value to the price of your home or office. You should be able to secure them. People steal trees. Yes, trees planted. Happened to a close neighbor a few years ago: New planting, forty locust saplings, all planted, mulched, watered, and in the morning…gone. Value, forty times $90.00 each, without insurance. Other personal property appraisers handle all of the other “stuff” mentioned above and much, much more.

So you need an appraisal to insure things, and you need an appraisal to claim against loss, damage, or theft using your insurance. You need an appraisal and a rider on your insurance for sterling silver, fur coats, jewelry and antiques, both home antiques and garage antiques. You need an appraisal for an estate when someone dies and leaves a certain amount of value, you need an appraisal to donate something other than cash if the value is over a certain amount, and you may want an appraisal to buy or sell something.

You need an appraiser if you want to donate anything other than green money. There are some pretty specific rules about that, but it’s doable. Many things are acceptable as donations, even horses. It is possible to donate items to an organization that wants to sell them, but there are even stricter rules about it and it takes time.

An example of a restricted-use personal appraisal: You want to buy something quite exotic… a helicopter. There is a very nice one for sale at the local airfield, but how much do you have to pay? Enter your friend the real estate appraiser. A call is sent to the helicopter guy who is a mechanical and equipment appraiser with make, model, year, engine hours and pictures via email. Helicopter guy does some digging and comes back. Down and Dirty – It’s called a restricted use appraisal and it’s just to help you out when you need a value to clear your mind. Agree, helicopters are terrifyingly exotic. Try this: your daughter talked you into a horse, she’s always a daughter, sons want cars. Same process, only this time we go to her, have her try the horse, stop her if we think the horse is beyond her or a bad choice in some other way. Perhaps she will suggest some places for a suitable horse, a tackling stand, and lessons on how to handle and ride such a large animal. We then help establish what the selling price of that horse should be in the same restricted use format, FYI.

Grandma just moved into a nice one-story condo where dinner is served in the “clubhouse” every night and there’s always something going on. She’s tired of dusting off that generational trash, so she let you drive. Relatives have come out of nowhere saying that grandma or grandpa promised them the same. Grandma doesn’t say, but she does say, “NO BEARINGS!” Now this is a little different, you don’t give… well, you don’t care about the value of a single item in that house, but you want Grandma to have as much money as possible because you like to see her smile and play. Bridge or Euchre or Texas Hold ’em to everyone you care about and having friends again instead of a big empty house.

You have a settlement problem. There’s a lot of that going around right now, saleout, that is.

We can help with that too. Most personal property appraisers also handle liquidations or auctions or some other form of distribution of personal property. We’ll help you decide whether to sell things locally or perhaps they would sell better at a regional auction house like Cowan’s in Cincinnati, Ohio, Neal’s in New Orleans, or Jackson’s in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. These are just three of the many auction houses. Reliable regional companies in the Midwest. There are others in other parts of the country, and there are reliable “field hammermen” all over the United States as well.

Now you have another problem, a relative who fights. Grandma refers them all to YOU! there are many ways to handle this, auction houses are one, well-advertised local clearance sales, sometimes called “estate sales” are another. If auction is your choice, we help you organize, pack and deliver things, pay us by the hour. If you choose a liquidation type sale, we enter the price and organize everything. The family enters and makes their decisions, the accounting is kept so that each member knows what each one took. When the sale is over, the money is divided in such a way that all family members get out equally. It’s about what Grandma said, “no niceties.” What’s left over goes to St. Vincent De Paul or his church or the reStore or the sidewalk. It is easy? No, it’s hard work but you don’t do it.

Haven’t you hit your hot button yet? Well, I’m trying. I really want to tell you what you want to know. Let’s see: Insurance, donation, inheritance tax liability, litigation support, asset valuation. What about the guarantee of a bank loan? Do you think you have something that could be enough, a fancy cattle with a bull? A small plane? Van Gogh? Well, maybe not, but how about six John Marin watercolors from the early years of his career, or cels from an early Disney movie with a letter from Walt himself? The banker looks askance. You need a personal property appraiser, those things have value.

Do we do this for the goodness of our ears? Of course not. Do you spend forty hours a week at your office out of the goodness of your heart? Of course not. We charge per job or per hour. We never charge for the amount of value we will bring to you, that’s unethical, a big no no. We take photos, we inventory, we do research, we help you understand what kind of value you need. Remember that the sentimental value is zero.

Once again, what would you like to know about the appraisal of personal property? How can we help you solve your value problems and your customers’ value problems? Feel free to phone or email, we can usually go almost anywhere in Michigan.