Tree Valuation

If this has just happened, the next few days matter more than the next few weeks, because the evidence disappears fast and it does not come back.

• Photograph everything before anything is cleared. The stump, the cut faces, the trunk sections, the debris, the gap where the canopy was, and wide shots showing the tree’s position relative to the house and the boundary. More is better. Photographs taken before cleanup cannot be recreated afterwards.
• Do not remove the stump. It is the best single piece of evidence you have. Trunk diameter at the cut drives the size input in the valuation, and the growth rings and wood condition establish age and whether the tree was healthy — which is the first thing the other side will dispute.
• Leave the timber on site if you can. Trunk sections and major limbs let the original dimensions be reconstructed properly rather than estimated.
• Do not agree a figure with the other party yet. Settlements offered in the first week are almost always framed around clean-up and replacement cost, which is a fraction of amenity value. Once you have accepted, you have accepted.
• Find anything showing the tree before. Old photographs, real estate listings, Google Street View, council aerial imagery, family pictures with the tree in the background. Any of it helps.
• Write down what happened while it is fresh — dates, times, who did the work, what was said, and whether you were asked.

Then get the valuation done before the site is cleared. A valuation can still be produced after everything has gone, but it is a stronger document when the assessor has seen the stump.

Size drives the volume term and is the single largest influence on the result. Height, canopy spread and trunk diameter are measured directly where the tree is standing, and reconstructed from the stump, the timber and photographs where it is not — which is why the stump matters so much.

Species sets the base value, and the spread between species is wide. A slow-growing, long-lived, high-value species carries a substantially higher rate per unit volume than a fast, short-lived one, because what was lost took longer to make and is harder to source at size.

Two separate modifiers doing different jobs. Form and vigour is the tree’s condition at the time — canopy density, structural soundness, defects, disease, past pruning damage. Useful life expectancy is the forward view: how many more years the tree could reasonably have been expected to contribute in that position.

Both cut in each direction, and this is where valuations are most often contested. The party who removed the tree has an obvious interest in it having been in decline, which is the argument that arrives when the stump has already been ground out and nobody photographed the canopy.

The same tree is not worth the same everywhere. The location term accounts for how well suited the tree was to where it stood and what it contributed there — shade over a living area, screening, street presence, habitat, visibility to the public, and its part in the character of the property.

A specimen framing the front of a house on a visible street contributes far more than the same tree crammed against a shed at the back, and the method reflects that rather than treating trees as interchangeable.

Where it is relevant, the report also sets out what replacement would actually involve: the largest stock realistically available for that species, supply and planting, establishment watering and aftercare, and the years before the replacement approaches what was lost.

This is presented alongside the amenity value rather than instead of it, because the two answer different questions and the gap between them is often the most persuasive part of the report. It also heads off the argument that a replacement tree makes the loss whole.

A valuation that presents a number without its working invites exactly one response, which is that the number is made up. Every input in these reports is stated — the measurements, the species and its base value, each modifier and the reasoning behind it, and the arithmetic joining them.

That is deliberately an invitation. The other side can check every figure, and where they disagree they have to disagree with a specific input on stated grounds rather than with the conclusion in general. Arguments about a documented valuation tend to move the result slightly or not at all; arguments about an undocumented one tend to end it.

The Revised Burnley Method is published, established and in general use across Australia. A valuation that names its method invites the assessor to check it against something. A valuation that refers vaguely to a recognised methodology without saying which one is the first thing a competent solicitor on the other side will go after, and rightly.

Reports are prepared and signed at AQF Level 5, the diploma-level consulting qualification, by the person who carried out the inspection. That is the threshold councils specify on arborist reports and the level an opposing party will test first. It is also publicly checkable, which is the point of stating it.

Every measurement, modifier and judgement is stated with its reasoning, so the valuation can be audited rather than only believed. An insurer assessing a claim is looking for a substantiated position they can sign off on. What gets rejected is an unsupported number, not a large one.

This practice does not sell tree removal or pruning, and has no interest in the outcome either way. The valuation lands where the method puts it. That matters more here than on any other report, because the obvious attack on a valuation is that the person who produced it had a reason to inflate it.