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Boat appraisals in Utah for donations, insurance, estate tax, and divorce, prepared in accordance with USPAP and IRS requirements. AppraiseItNow appraises sailboats, motorboats, pontoons, personal watercraft, and fishing boats across Utah, including Salt Lake City, Provo, and Ogden.
DEFENSIBLE, USPAP-COMPLIANT BOAT APPRAISAL REPORTS — QUALIFIED FOR THE IRS, UTAH 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 wake and ski boats, runabouts, pontoons, fishing boats, personal watercraft, sailboats and small cruisers in Utah for estate inventories, charitable contributions, divorce, and insurance claims.
What we look at
Make, model and length start the search. The engine or engines, the hours on them, any repower, the trailer, the tower and the electronics then separate two boats that read as identical in a listing. Freshwater service and indoor winter storage count too, and so does whether the hull has spent its life on one reservoir or been trailered across the state every summer.
Where the evidence comes from
Broker records, auction results and completed private sales for the same hull and power carry the conclusion. Published guides are a starting point, and we reconcile them against what actually changed hands rather than repeating whichever one is closest to hand. Where the guides disagree, the report explains which evidence was given weight and why.
What the report has to do decides the standard of value, and on a vessel the standards sit further apart than most owners expect. We settle that question before any research starts, because the same boat can be worth one number to an executor, another to an adjuster, and a third to a charity.
Estates and gifts
An inventory or a return asks what the vessel would have brought between a willing buyer and a willing seller on one particular date. Boats move hard with the season here, so the date is not a detail. Other household items in the same estate are valued as Utah personal property.
Claims
A claim on a damaged or stolen boat asks what it was worth the moment before, in the condition it was genuinely in. Engine hours, prior repairs and deferred work all belong inside that figure.
Donations
A vessel given to a charity needs a value supported by the same market evidence the filing will be read against, concluded as of the day the gift is actually made. We say in the report what the boat is, what it sold against, and how the condition was established.
Utah keeps boats out of the ordinary property tax system and sorts them instead by length, by model year and by what pushes them. None of the three produces a market value, but all three shape the record an appraisal has to work from.
The larger boats
1.5%
the Utah uniform fee rate on vessels 31 feet and longer, applied to a depreciated cost figure
Vessels 31 feet and longer sit outside the age based fee schedule and pay a uniform fee of 1.5 percent instead. The taxable value behind that fee is reached by the depreciated cost new method: the original manufacturer's suggested retail price for the base model, multiplied by a percent good factor for the model year, then multiplied by the rate.
Two things follow for an owner. The base model price is used, so the electronics, the repower and every option bought with the boat sit outside the calculation entirely. And the percent good factor is an average drawn from observed depreciation, not a reading of this particular hull. A figure produced that way can land a long way from what the vessel would actually bring, which is why a sale, a claim, an estate or a dissolution needs the boat looked at on its own.
Titles
1985 or newer
the Utah model year line for titling a watercraft or an outboard motor
Every watercraft and every outboard motor of model year 1985 or newer operated on Utah waters has to be titled. A list of craft sits outside that requirement: canoes, sailboards, a ship's lifeboat, inflatables whose outboard motor is rated at 25 horsepower or less, outboard motors at or under that rating, craft holding valid federal marine documents, and craft owned and operated by nonresidents or by government.
The canoe rule is the one that catches people out. No canoe can be titled whatever its model year, yet a canoe carrying a motor over 25 horsepower must be registered, and if that motor is a 1985 or newer model the motor itself has to be titled. The paperwork can therefore describe half the rig, and a valuation that followed the title alone would miss the other half.
Registration
Motor or sail
what makes a Utah craft a registered vessel rather than sporting goods
Utah draws the registration line at propulsion rather than at size. A boat with a motor on it, gas or electric, or a sailboat, has to be registered and numbered. Canoes, kayaks and other vessels not propelled by motor or sail are not, and a visitor whose boat is properly registered in another state may use Utah waters for sixty days or fewer in a calendar year without registering here.
That puts a trolling motor clipped to a fishing kayak, and a sail rigged on a board, on the registered side of the line. It is a useful check when an estate or a dissolution schedule lists watercraft, because the registration record is not an inventory of what a family owns on the water, only of what the propulsion rule happened to catch.
What Utah clients say we are known for
Across 8 published Utah appraisal reviews, every one from a client who paid AppraiseItNow for an appraisal, the three things they raise most often are how quickly we answer, that they would hire us again, and how fast the finished report arrived.
I needed an appraisal for Probate Court so I could get the boat and motor title in my name. The AppraiseItNow team was great: quick turnaround, outstanding service. I would definitely use them again.
Boat Appraisal for Probate
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 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
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
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:
Because J.D. Power/NADA Marine, the ABOS Marine Blue Book, and sold-boat databases each draw on different data and assumptions, they can yield materially different values for the same vessel. We treat the guides as a starting point and reconcile them against documented sales of comparable boats to reach one defensible number for your Utah vessel.
Recent transactions of similar make, model, year, condition, equipment, and engine hours drive the sales comparison analysis. Broker listings, auction records, and sold-boat databases supply that evidence, and our appraisers adjust for differences such as repowers, electronics packages, and trailer inclusion before concluding value.
Utah is an equitable-distribution state, and courts typically value marital property near the trial or decree date rather than the date of separation. Because boats depreciate and accrue engine hours between separation and trial, an appraisal keyed to the court's valuation date carries more weight than an older purchase receipt or listing printout.
Often, yes, but not through the standard small estate affidavit, which does not cover titled boats. Utah's DMV instead uses a separate survivorship affidavit, Form TC-569C, available when the estate subject to administration is worth $100,000 or less, at least 30 days have passed since death, and no more than four boats are involved. Larger estates go through probate, with the vessel valued at fair market value.
Most are not taxed ad valorem. Utah classifies vessels under 31 feet, along with personal watercraft, as uniform-fee property, so owners pay age-based or value-based fees at registration instead of an assessed personal property tax. That registration value serves tax administration only; a sale, estate, or divorce still calls for an appraisal of the specific vessel.
