Private deadlines
are real deadlines.

An executor may need a value to settle an estate or divide property among heirs. Divorcing spouses may need one before mediation or a hearing. Siblings buying each other out of a house need a number both sides can accept. Few of those dates move for an appraisal.

The upside is that there is no loan pipeline: no AMC queue, no underwriter, no lender conditions. The appraiser and the client agree terms directly, which removes whole layers of waiting.

On lender work, the order, the fee and the messages usually run through a lender or an AMC. On private work, the engagement sits between the appraiser and the client, often with an attorney involved. Agreeing a date is faster, but the details matter more because nobody else is checking them.

The standards do not loosen. USPAP applies to private assignments just as it does to lender work, and the appraiser has to pin down the client, the intended use and the effective date of value before starting. A rush changes none of that.

IRS Publication 551 explains that the basis of inherited property is generally its fair market value on the date of the decedent's death, or on an alternate valuation date if the estate's personal representative elects one. So the appraiser is researching the market as it stood then, not today.

The house may have been emptied, repaired or neglected since. The executor should share whatever is known about its condition on the valuation date. Retrospective work is not automatically slower, but it cannot skip the research. Sales from around that date still have to be found and checked.

Divorce appraisals stall most often on access, because one party lives in the home and the other ordered the work. Settle who opens the door before booking the date.

Tell the appraiser up front whether the report is for mediation, court or a private buyout, and whether both sides will receive it. Changing the intended use or the users halfway through can mean a new report and a new wait.