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Personal property appraisals in Louisiana for donations, estate tax, divorce, and probate, prepared in accordance with USPAP and IRS requirements. AppraiseItNow appraises furniture, jewelry, collectibles, art, and vehicles across Louisiana, including New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Shreveport.
DEFENSIBLE, USPAP-COMPLIANT PERSONAL PROPERTY APPRAISAL REPORTS — QUALIFIED FOR THE IRS, LOUISIANA COURTS, LENDERS, INSURERS, AND MORE.
Louisiana's cultural identity, including its French Creole antiques tradition, its jazz and music memorabilia, and Mardi Gras collectibles, asks an appraiser to understand regional factors as well as national benchmarks, whether the assignment is an estate in the Garden District, a firearms collection in Shreveport, or inherited jewelry in Lafayette. One of the assets below links to a page written for Louisiana; the rest link to the appraisers who cover them nationwide.
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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.
Personal Property Appraiser
ISA Accredited Member with 30 years in the trade, from running estate sales and an auction gallery to appraising luxury apparel, furniture, artwork, antiques, and business assets, primarily for IRS tax filings.
Machinery & Equipment Appraiser
Third-generation auctioneer and CAGA Certified Appraiser with more than 20 years valuing machinery, equipment, vehicles, business assets, and estates for banks, attorneys, and trustees across the Carolinas.
Personal Property Appraiser
ISA Accredited Member specializing in Asian art, with a Master's from SOAS and a Postgraduate Diploma in Asian Art. Ashley chairs the ISA's Antiques, Furnishings, and Decorative Arts committee and appraises for charitable donation, insurance, and equitable distribution.
Client Success Manager
Manages each engagement from the first enquiry to the delivered report, and keeps you posted at every step along the way.
International Society of AppraisersAccredited Member
Certified Appraisers Guild of AmericaCertified Appraiser
The Appraisal FoundationAuthorized by Congress as the source of appraisal standardsAppraiseItNow appraises antiques, furniture, art, silver, jewelry and firearms in Louisiana for successions, charitable donations, divorce and insurance claims. Louisiana shapes the question more than most states do: an estate may have forced heirs to satisfy and a community to divide, and both begin with what the movable property was worth on a stated day.
Successions
Each object is named, researched against completed sales and valued as of the date of death, in enough detail that any figure can be traced back to the evidence behind it. That is what turns a list of numbers into something a court, a notary or a tax preparer can work from without asking where it came from.
Community property
A partition needs one consistent set of values across the whole of the movables, not two lists built on different assumptions about the same furniture. We value the property once and give both sides the same reasoning, which narrows the argument to the things actually in dispute.
Donations and claims
A charitable gift is measured by resale evidence on the day it was given. An insurance loss is measured by what putting the owner back costs now. Those are different questions with different answers, and a report that blurs them helps nobody, so ours answers only the one it was asked.
Most Louisiana assignments never require anyone to travel. Photographs, a written list, receipts and whatever provenance papers survive are enough to research the great majority of household property, and the few pieces that genuinely need handling are the ones we flag for a visit.
What arrives
Receipts, prior reports, auction invoices and insurance schedules all shorten the research and sharpen the result. Where none of that survives, the description and the photographs carry the file, and the report says plainly which pieces were valued from limited information.
What you receive
A notary, a succession attorney, a tax preparer and an adjuster each want something different from the same furniture. The report is built for the reader named at the outset, states the standard of value it used, and sets out the sales behind the conclusions rather than asking anyone to take them on trust.
Three articles of the Louisiana codes decide what an appraisal of movable property has to answer: who is owed a fixed share of the estate, how far back the count reaches, and what size of succession avoids a full administration.
Forced portion
One fourth
of the estate is reserved where a single forced heir survives
Donations, whether made during life or by testament, may not exceed three fourths of the donor’s property where one forced heir survives at the death, and may not exceed one half where two or more do. Forced heirs are descendants of the first degree who are twenty three years of age or younger at the death, together with descendants of the first degree of any age who are permanently incapable of caring for their persons or administering their estates. What they are owed is a fraction of a valued mass, so the values placed on the movables set the size of it.
The mass
Three years
of earlier gifts are added back before the forced portion is worked out
To work out the reduction donations are subject to, an aggregate is formed of all the property belonging to the donor at death, the sums due by the estate are deducted, and property given away within three years of the death is fictitiously added back at its value at the time of the donation. Life insurance premiums and proceeds stay outside the calculation, as do contributions and benefits under qualified retirement plans. A gift of furniture, silver or jewelry made inside that window therefore needs a value as of the day it was given, not as of the death.
Small successions
$200,000
of gross value at the date of death defines a small succession
A small succession is the succession of a person who died domiciled in Louisiana leaving property with a gross value of $200,000 or less, valued as of the date of death. For a person domiciled elsewhere who left property here, the figure is $125,000, and a succession where the death occurred at least twenty years before the affidavit qualifies whatever the property is worth. Gross value means before debts, so household contents count at their full value toward the test.
What Louisiana clients say we are known for
Across 23 published Louisiana appraisal reviews, every one from a client who paid AppraiseItNow for an appraisal, the three things they raise most often are that they would hire us again, how much research is visible in the report, and how quickly we answer.
AppraiseItNow Inc. is the best company I was lucky to find by accident. I was looking for someone to appraise cabinets for a donation to charity. I asked for multiple referrals, called multiple appraisal services, etc., and no one could help me. I found AppraiseItNow and from the moment I started working with them, they were wonderful! Joe guided me on what I needed to send him, what needed to be done and stayed in touch with me the entire time. Their customer service is OUTSTANDING and a welcome surprise in today’s world where good customer service is an anomaly! They returned an appraisal in a timely manner, it was clear, concise, cost-effective and exactly what I needed. They followed up with me multiple times to ensure that I received it and everything was OK. My CPA is also thrilled to have them as an accredited appraisal service he can use for other clients. I rarely leave reviews, but I could not pass giving them 5 stars and I’d give 10 if possible! THANK YOU JOE AND ALL AT APPRAISEITNOW!!👊🏼
Personal Property Appraisal for Charitable Donation
I used AppraiseItNow for the first time last month and I was extremely pleased with the results. I needed an appraisal done for insurance purposes and the level of detail about each of my antique furniture pieces was thorough and very helpful in my being able to get the highest amount possible from my insurance company for the antique items that were damaged. I could see that they spent time making sure that the information she included was correct and current for my antique furniture items in the current market. The team responded to my emails timely to answer any questions I had. I would highly recommend Appraise It Now to get a thorough and professional appraisal done on antique items. I do intend to use them again for other antique furniture and jewelry that I have. Job well done! 😃🤗
Antique Furniture Appraisal for Insurance Claim
It is a pleasure to work with Joe and his team. They communicate every step along the way and made the process simple for us to have more than 35 firearms appraised. It was all done in a timely manner and the final report is easy to understand. I highly recommend their services.
Gun Appraisal for Probate
I was skeptical at first, but the company exceeded all of my expectations. The team responded quickly to every question, and the service was excellent. They’re now my go to source for my collection. I’ve used them twice already, and I plan to use them several more times.
Firearms Appraisal for Personal Use
Joe made the process to have my piece of furniture appraised extremely easy, efficient and quick. My experience was great and I'd recommend AppraiseItNow to anyone looking for an appraisal.
Furniture Appraisal for Insurance Coverage
I asked AppraiseItNow to value a piece of sports memorabilia for purposes of a charitable donation. The item is rarely sold. Their research unearthed an important recent sale of a similar item, which I had not found previously, and which the first appraiser I used had not found either. AppraiseItNow was a good deal more expensive than the first service, but they crafted a detailed report in which I have much more confidence. They also helped me make sure the correct tax forms are used. Thank you!
Sports Memorabilia Appraisal for Charitable Donation
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:
From completed transactions, not asking prices. Our appraisers work from realized sales on platforms such as GunBroker, auction archives like Rock Island, and dealer records, using the Blue Book of Gun Values as a baseline that gets adjusted to current market conditions for each specific model and configuration.
Substantially. The firearms market prices on NRA condition standards and percentage-of-original-finish measures, and small grade differences change the conclusion materially. For collectible pieces, originality is even more powerful: matching serial numbers and factory configuration can be worth large multiples over a similar-looking altered gun.
They are listed with the rest of the personal property on the succession's inventory or descriptive list, with fair market values the representative can defend. Because Louisiana has no probate referee system, a documented appraisal is the practical way to support those filed values, especially for collections with significant pieces.
It depends on the purpose. Fair market value governs estate, IRS, and divorce work; replacement value applies to insurance scheduling and runs higher; liquidation value reflects a quick sale. The same firearm carries a different number under each standard, so the report must name the one being used.