Inheriting land is different from inheriting a house. A house has an address, a tax record and a rough sense of what neighbours sold for. Land often arrives as a parcel number, a name on a deed, and no clear idea of what it is or what it is worth.
Start with what you actually have
Before anything else, establish the basics. Most of this is publicly available from the county:
- The parcel number and legal description, from the deed.
- Acreage as recorded, which may differ from acreage as surveyed.
- Current zoning, from the county rather than from family memory.
- Any plat or survey that exists. Older parcels sometimes have none.
- Tax status. Unpaid property tax follows the land, and conservation-use covenants can carry a penalty if broken.
That last point catches people out. Land enrolled in a conservation use assessment carries a commitment, and selling or changing use before the term ends can trigger a recapture of the tax benefit. Worth knowing before you list it.
The valuation date is not today
This is the part that surprises most people. For estate purposes, inherited property is generally valued as of the date the previous owner died, not as of today.
That matters for two reasons. It is the figure the estate reports, and it is generally the figure your cost basis is adjusted to. If you sell the land later, your taxable gain is measured from that date-of-death value. Where land has been held for decades and appreciated substantially, the difference between a documented date-of-death value and a guess can be considerable.
A retrospective appraisal, built from market evidence as it existed on that date, is what makes the figure defensible years later. An informal estimate is not, and the moment it matters is usually long after anyone remembers where the number came from.
How any of this applies to your situation is a question for a CPA or an estate attorney. We produce the valuation; they advise on what to do with it.
Common situations, and what they usually mean
- Multiple heirs, no agreement. An independent valuation often unblocks this, because it replaces competing opinions with one documented figure. Where co-owners genuinely cannot agree, a partition action is the legal route, and it will need a defensible value.
- Nobody knows where the boundaries are. Common with older rural parcels. An appraisal is not a survey; if the boundaries are genuinely uncertain, a surveyor comes first.
- The land is landlocked. Check for a recorded easement. Its presence or absence changes the value dramatically.
- Someone has been using it. Grazing, hunting, storage or a neighbour’s fence in the wrong place. Long-running unauthorised use raises legal questions worth resolving before a sale.
Hold or sell
That is not an appraiser’s decision, but a valuation gives you the information to make it. What the parcel is worth as it stands, what it might be worth with a change in entitlement, what carrying it costs each year in tax, and whether the market for that kind of land in that county is active or thin.
If the parcel sits in a growth corridor, holding may be rational. If it is remote, constrained and generating an annual tax bill, that is a different calculation. Either way it should be a decision rather than a default.
A land appraisal for an inherited parcel is usually retrospective to the date of death, which is a different assignment from valuing it today. Say which one you need at the outset, because it changes the entire analysis. Our estate and date-of-death appraisal page covers the retrospective side in more detail.
