Woody Fincham, SRA, AI-RRS, ASA, RAA, is a member of RAC and has been qualified as an expert in courts throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia. Attorneys have relied on his reports and testimony in matters involving complex residential property for many years.

Assignment types

•            Divorce and equitable distribution

•            Estate and trust valuation

•            Partition matters

•            Partial interests and fractional ownership

•            Life estates and remainder interests

•            Construction defect and diminution in value

•            Undisclosed condition and property defect matters

•            Boundary, easement, and access disputes

•            Eminent domain and partial takings

•            Conservation easement matters

•            Forensic and retrospective review

•            Trial and deposition preparation

Most residential appraisal practices — and a good many commercial ones — are built around lending work. A report developed for a lender’s underwriting decision is a fundamentally different product from one developed for litigation, in scope, in documentation, and in what it has to withstand. We are regularly retained on assignments that firms geared to lending volume will not or cannot take: large acreage and estate property, unique and high-value residences, conservation easement work, and valuation problems with no clean set of comparable sales.

The role of the appraiser as a witness

An appraiser retained in a contested matter is not a member of the litigation team. We develop an independent opinion under USPAP, we report the methods and reasoning behind it, and we explain and defend that analysis under examination. We do not advocate for a party or a result, and our fee is never contingent on the outcome — an arrangement USPAP prohibits and one that opposing counsel will find if it exists.

That posture is not a limitation on our usefulness to you. It is the source of it. An expert whose conclusion moves with the client’s interest is an expert whose conclusion can be discredited without ever reaching the merits.

Review of experts

We also perform appraisal review and consulting in these same areas. Before a deposition or trial, it is good practice to know whether the expert you retained and the expert on the other side have each written a well-supported opinion. A review tells you where each report is strong, where it is thin, and what questions the analysis invites. See Appraisal Review Services.

Teaching and testimony

Woody Fincham is an Appraisal Institute instructor, including for the Institute’s green and energy-efficient valuation curriculum. That is relevant here for a specific reason: instructors spend their working lives answering hard questions from people who learn differently and explaining complex material to a room that has not agreed to accept it. Cross-examination asks for the same skill under less friendly conditions.