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Boat appraisals in California for donations, insurance, estate tax, and divorce, prepared in accordance with USPAP and IRS requirements. AppraiseItNow appraises sailboats, motorboats, yachts, personal watercraft, and fishing boats across California, including Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco.
Service was top notch and provided incredible value for the cost!
…I am looking forward to utilizing AppraiseItNow for many years to come
I love the online appraisal format… I love your professional service!
DEFENSIBLE, USPAP-COMPLIANT BOAT APPRAISAL REPORTS — QUALIFIED FOR THE IRS, CALIFORNIA COURTS, LENDERS, INSURERS, AND MORE.
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Owner & CEO
Joe founded AppraiseItNow to make a certified, USPAP-compliant appraisal as simple to order as anything else online. A former Bain & Company strategy consultant, Joe leads the entire team and specializes in strategy, growth, and the firm's tech capabilities.
Vehicle Appraiser
CAGA Certified Appraiser since 2014, covering vehicles, boats, equipment, fine art, and collectibles. A classic-car restoration background informs her vehicle work, with reports prepared for insurance, divorce, and charitable contributions.
Client Success Manager
Manages each engagement from the first enquiry to the delivered report, and keeps you posted at every step along the way.
Certified Appraisers Guild of AmericaCertified Appraiser
The Appraisal FoundationAuthorized by Congress as the source of appraisal standardsAppraiseItNow appraises sailboats, powerboats, houseboats, cabin cruisers and personal watercraft in California for charitable gifts, insurance schedules, estate filings, bankruptcy and divorce. Smaller craft are researched online from the title, the hull number, service and repower history and the owner photographs, while larger vessels are researched the same way and inspected where the intended use asks for it. Published marine guides sit in the file as a check on a conclusion, never as its source. Where two of them part company over one hull, the boats that actually sold decide it, and the report shows which ones did.
Charitable gifts
A deduction rests on the market a boat would genuinely change hands in, not on what a dealer would ask for a replacement. We name the closed sales behind the conclusion and the market level each of them came from.
Estates and divorce
An executor needs the value that applied on a particular date. A separating couple needs the one that applies on the date they or the court settle on. Fixing that before any research starts is what keeps a conclusion steady while the file stays open.
Coverage and claims
A coverage schedule asks what it would cost to put an equivalent boat back in the slip. A loss asks what this vessel was worth in the moment before it happened. Those are separate questions with separate answers, and a figure written for one of them will not stand up when it is offered for the other.
Three California assignments, one headline apiece. Owner names, figures and identifying detail stay in the working file.
Charitable donation
A small aluminum fishing boat donated to a local youth charity, valued from completed sales of comparable hulls and outboards.
Insurance coverage
A custom built houseboat researched so the coverage limit on the policy rested on what comparable vessels are bringing now.
Estate tax
A pleasure boat and the trailer under it valued together for an estate filing, each researched against the market it actually trades in.
Two California rules turn on what a boat is for rather than on what it is worth: one cuts the assessment on a vessel that earns its living, the other takes the smallest pleasure boats off the roll altogether.
Assessment
4 percent
of full cash value is where California assesses a documented vessel that qualifies
A documented vessel is assessed at 4 percent of its full cash value only where it is engaged or employed exclusively in taking fish or other living resources of the sea for commercial purposes, in instruction or research as an oceanographic research vessel, or in carrying seven or more people for hire for commercial passenger fishing under a current certificate of inspection issued by the United States Coast Guard. Occasional dive, tour or whale watching use does not break that last category, and occasional means 15 percent or less of the total operating time logged for the preceding assessment year. A vessel that drifts outside those uses goes back to full value.
Exemption
$400
of market value or less leaves one pleasure vessel free from California property tax
A vessel with a market value of four hundred dollars or less is free from taxation, and for this purpose the vessel takes in its mode of power and the furnishings normally carried aboard it. The relief is narrow on purpose. It reaches only vessels used or held for noncommercial purposes, it does not reach a lifeboat or tender working alongside a more valuable vessel, and it applies to no more than one vessel owned, claimed, possessed or controlled by the same assessee on the lien date.
What clients say we are known for
Across 80+ published AppraiseItNow reviews the picture is consistent: every one is from a client who paid us for an appraisal, and the three things they raise most often are that they would hire us again, how quickly we answer, and how much research is visible in the report.
AppraiseItNow helped us appraise a very unique set of propulsion boats. Service was top notch and provided incredible value for the cost!
Boat Appraisal for Loan Collateral
I love the online appraisal format to give me a good idea of what my boat is worth without showing the boat. The appraisal fee is more than reasonable, and I love your professional service!
Boat Appraisal for Charitable Donation
We recently used AppraiseItNow for one of our clients and couldn’t be happier with the experience. The customer service was excellent, and Joe was quick to respond to all of our questions. He provided everything we needed promptly and made the process smooth from start to finish. Thank you!
Boat Appraisal for Insurance Coverage
AppraiseItNow delivered a fair, well-supported appraisal that met all required standards. Their team was professional, responsive, and fast throughout the process. I would gladly use them again.
Boat Appraisal for Charitable Donation
AppraiseItNow was excellent to work with. They delivered exactly what I needed and were incredibly responsive throughout the process. I’d definitely recommend them!
Boat Appraisal for Insurance Claim
Very straightforward and efficient way to gain a quality certified boat appraisal. I will suggest AppraiseItNow to all my boating friends!
Boat Appraisal for Loan Collateral
Given the USPAP-compliant nature of AppraiseItNow’s appraisal reports, we prepare our deliverables for major legal, tax, and financial reporting purposes for individual and commercial clients.
Popular uses of our appraisal reports include:
Yes. Boats are taxable personal property, and unlike real estate under Article XIII A's base-year rules, personal property is appraised annually at market value. That is why a documented fair market value opinion can matter for assessment appeals after a year of soft prices.
Closed transactions: BoatWizard's SoldBoats database, broker records, and auction results. Open-market value for a production boat is most defensibly grounded in recently sold comparables adjusted for engine hours, equipment, and condition, not in optimistic listings.
Typically by the court-appointed probate referee on the estate's Inventory and Appraisal, filed within four months after letters issue, at fair market value as of the date of death. Supplemental inventories follow the same rule for later-discovered property.
With cost or income evidence rather than a pass. The Assessors’ Handbook states that the absence of an actual market does not let property escape taxation, and that market value means value when the property is put to beneficial use, not the sum of hull, engine, and electronics sold separately. For one-off or heavily modified boats we build value from replacement cost less depreciation, or from earnings where the vessel works commercially.
Yes. A vessel held in a charter, rental, or marina fleet is business personal property, revalued each year from reported acquisition year and cost adjusted toward market. Floating and manufactured homes sitting in the same marina follow real property style rules and are not reappraised annually, so two assets in one harbor can be on entirely different assessment cycles.