Taylor Berlin Taylor Berlin RICS Regulated · Property Valuers
Practice / For solicitors & accountants
— A standing instruction

A valuer your
file can rely on.

Most of the practice’s work arrives by referral from solicitors and accountants. What follows is the position we take when the instruction matters.

— The standing position

You don’t need to teach us how Red Book reports are read on your side of the desk.

We’ve sat in conferences with counsel, defended figures against the District Valuer’s Service, and watched a CGT computation get unpicked across three weeks of correspondence. The report we send you is built with all of that in mind — because the next reader of it usually isn’t you.

— For solicitors

The work that lands on your desk.

Probate, matrimonial, contentious probate, expert witness, leasehold enfranchisement. Where a Red Book report is the foundation document and someone, eventually, will challenge it.

  • Probate S. 160 IHTA 1984 valuations. Defensible date-of-death figures with comparable schedules sufficient to answer a DV referral.
  • Matrimonial Single-joint-expert & party-appointed. CPR Part 35 compliant, with conferences with counsel as required.
  • Litigation Expert witness work. Boundary, easement, dilapidations and lease extension disputes (1967 / 1993 Acts).
  • Trustee Trust & estate reporting. Periodic and ad-hoc valuations for trustees, executors and family offices.
— For accountants

The numbers your return depends on.

CGT, IHT, SDLT, and audit-grade reporting for accounts. Where the figure has to survive a Self-Assessment enquiry or an auditor’s independent review, the methodology has to be defensible from the file.

  • CGT March 1982 rebasing & PPR. Retrospective and current-date valuations, with PPR garden-and-grounds analysis where it’s in issue.
  • IHT Lifetime gifts & settled property. Including BPR / APR positions and Section 161 related-property considerations.
  • SDLT Mixed-use & MDR apportionment. Defensible apportionments between residential and non-residential elements for the SDLT computation.
  • Accounts Audit-grade reporting. FRS 102 / 105 fair value for investment property, with sign-off written for the audit file.
— Tool, on the practice

A working estimator for the moment a client asks ‘what will the tax be?’ before you’ve had time to look at it properly.

CGT IHT SDLT
Open the estimators
— A first instruction

What to send, what comes back.

The shorter the brief, the longer the report tends to take. A complete file at the outset shaves days off the timeline and almost always improves the figure.

Begin an instruction
— What to send us

Useful from day one.

  • The property address & access arrangements
  • The basis of valuation (probate, CGT, matrimonial, market value)
  • The valuation date (date of death, date of disposal, date of trial)
  • Title register and plan, if to hand
  • Tenancy or Lease documents, if let
  • Any known defects or material issues
  • Anything you already suspect HMRC may take a view on
— What we send back

The standard deliverable.

  • Red Book report, PDF, signed by the inspecting partner
  • Comparable evidence schedule with adjustments
  • Methodology and assumptions, written for the next reader
  • Inspection photographs and notes on the file
  • Cover note tailored to the instructing audience
— What the finished file looks like

Three recent instructions.

Anonymised · 2024–26
Accountant referral · CGT

Dual-date CGT, detached home, LB Bromley.

Retrospective April 2015 figure and current market value in one Red Book report, prepared for the disposal computation.

Read case study
Solicitor referral · Charities Act

A rural estate, Charities Act disposal.

149 acres in the Kent Downs, valued for trustees ahead of a proposed disposal. Green Belt, public rights of way, an institutional planning use.

Read case study
Accountant referral · Audit

Six mixed-use freeholds, audit-year sign-off.

£5.54m aggregate fair value across six FRS 102 reports (North London and Luton), written for the audit file.

Read case study

When you need it sooner.

We hold capacity for urgent instructions from referring firms. Faster turnarounds carry a fee uplift, agreed before we take the brief, never a surprise on the invoice.

Lane When you’d use it Turnaround
Standard. Residential or commercial probate, CGT or matrimonial work with no special handling. 10 working days
Expedited. Tax-deadline driven; pre-completion CGT; an estate where the IHT submission window is closing. 5 working days
Urgent. A figure required against a deadline already on top of you: a trustee meeting, a banking decision, an offer about to lapse. 48 hours
— Handled in-house

DV referrals are part of the work,
not a separate fee.

Where the figure we’ve issued gets referred to the District Valuer’s Service, the same partner who signed the report engages with the DV directly. We exchange schedules, work toward an agreed figure, and keep your file updated as the correspondence runs.

There’s no separate retainer for the negotiation phase. It’s how a probate or CGT instruction ends, and the work is built into the original fee on the standard lane.

Read: defending a probate figure
— Position on fees

Three things we don’t do. By policy.

— 01

Take referral fees.

The work is referred because the last report held up. We’d like to keep it that way.

— 02

Discount the methodology.

Same evidence base on a £2k instruction as on a £20k one. The fee scales with scope, never with rigour.

— 03

Work on a contingency.

The fee doesn’t move with the figure we arrive at, the outcome of a hearing, or whether a transaction completes. A valuation tied to its own conclusion isn’t a valuation.

— Begin a referral relationship

Send us a brief.
We’ll send back a fee.

— By email
enquiries@taylorberlin.co.uk
Request a quote