Appraiser in Phoenix, Arizona
Maricopa County — certified valuation of real estate, personal property, machinery and equipment, and business interests for clients in Phoenix.
Maricopa County
The state's largest and most varied market. Historic districts near downtown, mid-century neighbourhoods in the central corridor, and sprawling newer development at the edges. Complex assignments are common: historic designation, mixed-use, unusual lot configurations, and a wide spread between adjacent submarkets that automated valuations handle badly.
A market that is really several markets
Phoenix is the largest and most internally varied market in the state, and the practical problem it creates for valuation is adjacency: two neighbourhoods sharing a boundary can behave as entirely separate markets. Historic districts near the centre, mid-century stock through the central corridor, industrial and warehouse product along the freight corridors, and continuous newer development at the edges.
Automated valuation tools handle that adjacency badly, because the thing they are weakest at — a sharp value boundary between physically similar houses a short distance apart — is exactly what this market is full of. That is a statement about what mass models do, not a claim about any particular product.
Maricopa County assessor practice
Phoenix sits in Maricopa County, so the assessor calendar is the county's. The Notice of Valuation carries both a Full Cash Value and a Limited Property Value; tax is calculated on the Limited Property Value, whose annual increase is capped at 5% under Proposition 117 absent a significant addition, deletion, or change of use.
Only the Full Cash Value and the legal classification are appealable. The Petition for Review is filed with the assessor within 60 days of the mailing date on the Notice, with the Arizona State Board of Equalization above it. Commercial and industrial classifications are appealed on the same calendar as residential, which catches out owners who assume business property runs on a different clock.
Business personal property, and the deadline that moves
Any business holding equipment in the county reports it annually to the assessor on Arizona Department of Revenue form 82520. For tax year 2026 the commercial and agricultural business personal property exemption is $500,000 of full cash value. Locally assessed personal property other than manufactured housing is assessed on full cash value, and it is the county assessor rather than the Department that classifies and values it.
That is the point at which an equipment schedule stops being an internal accounting record and becomes a filing. A depreciation schedule prepared for a tax return is not an appraisal and does not become one by being attached to something.
Complex property and litigation venue
Historic designation, mixed-use parcels, unusual lot configurations and assemblage questions all appear here more often than in the surrounding cities, and they share a characteristic: the conclusion turns on the reasoning behind the adjustments rather than on the comparable selection alone. Those reports are longer because they have to show their work.
Maricopa County Superior Court sits in Phoenix, and the federal District of Arizona has its Phoenix courthouse here as well. Where a report is prepared for a matter in either, it is written on the assumption that the reader is not the person who commissioned it.
Appraisal services in Phoenix
Real property inspected in person throughout Arizona. Personal property and business valuation handled remotely if you prefer.
Personal Property
Machinery, equipment and business inventory, plus firearms, antiques and full household contents — appraised remotely, worldwide.
Machinery & Equipment
Farm, medical, construction, and shop equipment — desk appraisals worldwide, on-site throughout Arizona.
Residential Valuation
Single-family, condo, multi-family, manufactured and mobile homes — Arizona-licensed, statewide.
Business Valuation
Closely held companies and professional practices — engagements accepted worldwide.
Need an appraisal in Phoenix?
Tell us what you have and what it's for. You get a fixed written quote — never an hourly meter, never a sales call.
What the work actually looks like
Real assignments, client details removed — what each engagement actually turned on, rather than how it felt.
A house, a workshop of machine tools, a forty-year firearms collection and a stake in the family company — four disciplines that three appraisers had only partly covered. One engagement, one effective date, one set of assumptions.
A donation the regulations would have aggregated past the appraisal threshold, which the donor had assessed item by item. One qualified appraisal covering the group, itemized, signed inside the window the regulations allow.
An opposing report whose number was not obviously wrong — which is what made it dangerous. It failed on its own certification, and was answered section by section with an independent valuation to the correct definition of value.