Estate and Date-of-Death Appraisals in Charleston

For most Charleston families, the date-of-death appraisal isn't about paying a tax; it's about not overpaying one later. Under federal tax law, property that passes through an estate generally receives a "stepped-up" basis equal to its fair market value on the date of death. The heirs' basis resets to that value, and the decades of appreciation before it are never taxed as capital gain.

A simple example: a Mount Pleasant home bought in 1987 for $140,000 is appraised at $850,000 as of the owner's date of death. If the heirs sell it a year later for $870,000, their taxable gain is roughly $20,000 — not $730,000. Without a supported date-of-death value, that basis is hard to prove, and the family may end up either paying tax on gain they never should have owed or trying to reconstruct a value years after the fact when the records are harder to find.

One detail worth knowing in South Carolina: when a home is owned jointly by spouses, typically only the deceased spouse's half receives the step-up at the first death. The appraisal still matters, even if the surviving spouse has no plans to sell, because it documents that half of the basis for the future. Your CPA can tell you exactly how it applies to your situation.

South Carolina has no state estate tax and no inheritance tax. At the federal level, estates of people who die in 2026 have a basic exclusion of $15 million per person, so the large majority of Charleston-area estates owe no federal estate tax and file no estate tax return. For these estates, the appraisal exists to document basis for the heirs, support the probate inventory, and give the family a defensible number for their own decisions.

You may read about an "alternate valuation date" — valuing the estate six months after death instead of on the date of death. That election is generally only available to estates that actually owe federal estate tax, and it applies to every asset in the estate at once, so it rarely comes into play for a typical family estate. Whether it applies and whether it makes sense is a decision for the estate's attorney or CPA; if they elect it, we can appraise as of that date as well.

An automated value from a listing website or a real estate agent's comparative market analysis isn't an appraisal, and it isn't developed as of a past date. An estate attorney or CPA will generally want a written appraisal prepared by a licensed appraiser, with an explicit effective date, a stated intended use, and comparable sales drawn from the right window of time. That's what an IRS examiner or a probate court would expect to see if the value were ever questioned, and it's what we prepare.

It also matters that the appraiser is independent. An appraisal from someone who stands to earn a commission on the sale, or who has a stake in the estate, is open to challenge. Our only role in the estate is the valuation.

The most common question we hear is some version of "how can you value the house as it was two years ago?" The answer is that we combine a current inspection with the historical record. We inspect and measure the property today, then work backward: MLS listing history and photographs, county assessor and permit records, prior appraisals or inspections, family photographs, and conversations with the people who knew the property. Any changes since the effective date — a new roof, a renovated kitchen, storm damage, deferred maintenance that has since been addressed — are identified and accounted for so the report describes the property as it stood on that date.

The comparable sales are then selected from the market as it existed on the effective date, not from today's market. In a fast-moving area like Charleston that distinction is the whole point: a sale from six months after the effective date can reflect a meaningfully different market than one from six months before.

If the property has already sold, or if an interior inspection isn't possible, an appraisal can still be developed. Those situations are common in estate work and are handled within professional appraisal standards, with the limitations clearly disclosed in the report.

Estates in the Charleston area are usually administered through the county probate court — Charleston County for Mount Pleasant, the islands, West Ashley and downtown; Berkeley or Dorchester County for Daniel Island, Goose Creek and Summerville. The personal representative is responsible for inventorying the estate's assets, and a written appraisal is the cleanest way to support the real estate value on that inventory.

Long-held family property is the norm here. A home on James Island or in the Old Village that has been in one family for forty years often has no recent sale, no recent appraisal and a condition that reflects decades of an owner's choices. Valuing it fairly depends on knowing how these neighborhoods have changed over time, which is the kind of local market history we've built up over more than a decade of appraising in the Lowcountry.

When heirs disagree about what a property is worth, an independent appraisal often settles the question before it becomes a dispute. It gives a sibling buying out the others a fair price, gives a family deciding whether to sell a realistic starting point, and gives everyone the same number to work from.