---
title: hire a natural asset valuation
canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/hire-a-natural-asset-valuation
markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/hire-a-natural-asset-valuation.md
subtitle: one parcel. one account. you hire it
category: esv
---

# hire a natural asset valuation

*one parcel. one account. you hire it*

You hold the deed. You have an appraisal, or you are about to order one. The appraiser will walk the property, pull the comparable sales, work the income if there is any, and hand back a number for what a buyer would pay for the deed. That file is doing its job.

It is not doing a second job, and nobody asked it to. The wetland at the low end of the parcel, the meadow that holds the hillside, the aquifer under both of them are at work every day, and none of that work appears in the file as work. It appears, if at all, as acreage and a use.

:::johnson
**the appraisal prices the deed. the living work is a different account, and you can hire it.** One parcel. Stocks, flows, a natural cap rate, and a value gap. Beside the appraisal, not instead of it.

[hire the valuation →](/contact?from=guide&topic=nature-valuation)
:::

## who this is for

A landowner with a deed and an appraisal. A ranch, a timber tract, a farm, a family place, a parcel somebody wants to subdivide. You might be selling, borrowing against it, settling an estate, writing an easement, or just deciding. In every one of those situations someone hands you a number for the deed, and that number becomes the conversation.

It is also for the people who advise that landowner: the attorney drafting the easement, the broker who knows the parcel is more than its comps, the forester who has watched the creek come back, the family office that carries the ranch as a line item and knows better.

If you are an investor or a capital provider looking at land you do not own, there is a paragraph for you further down.

## what the appraisal leaves out

A real estate appraisal prices the deed. It does not book the living work. The longer version is [nature-blind appraisal](/guide/nature-blind-appraisal?from=guide).

The wetland, the meadow, and the aquifer on a parcel exist whether or not an appraiser books them and whether or not anyone buys a certificate. Ensurance funds that living condition. A valuation is how that condition becomes a number you can hire. The number is not the worth.

We are offering you a number, and telling you before you pay for it that the number is a reading of the place, not the place. The longer argument is in [a valuation is not the worth](/guide/a-valuation-is-not-the-worth?from=guide).

## the service

Two services on our [nature finance list](/services#finance) do this work. **Natural capital valuation** is the engagement. **Ecosystem service accounting** is the account that comes with it.

The engine behind both is called **RealValue**. We have run it on real parcels since about 2022. It is ours, it is operational, and it is instrumental: it exists to make a living system legible to the people who hold capital, so that capital can protect the system. It does not exist to turn the parcel into a price.

The method, in words. Every parcel holds one or more of fifteen ecosystem stocks. Every stock does some share of nineteen kinds of work, which we call flows. For each stock and flow there is a published ecosystem service value per acre per year, drawn from the global literature. We start there, then adjust by the condition of that stock on your parcel. A grazed-down meadow does not do the work of a meadow in good condition. A ditched wetland does not do the work of one left whole. Sum the adjusted flows and you have the year's living work for that parcel. We are not running a new survey on every ranch. We are applying the published record to your parcel and correcting it for the shape the parcel is actually in. The correction is the work. Published values carry transfer error, and two flows can describe one benefit. Condition adjustment, checked against what is on the parcel, narrows that. The result is a reading, not a point estimate.

## what the account makes legible

The fifteen stocks include temperate forest, grasslands, shrublands, rivers and lakes, inland wetlands, coastal systems, desert, cultivated and developed land, and rural open space, among others. We described all fifteen in [15 ecosystem types](/guide/15-ecosystem-types-natural-capital-stocks?from=guide).

The nineteen flows include clean water, water abundance, erosion control, pollination, healthy soils, climate stability, habitat, risk and resilience, food, raw materials, recreation, and existence and legacy, among others. Each is a kind of work the stock does for someone, often someone downstream who has never seen the parcel. We described all nineteen in [19 ecosystem services](/guide/19-ecosystem-services-natural-capital-flows?from=guide).

The account maps which stocks are on your parcel, what condition each is in, and which flows each produces at that condition. For most landowners it is the first time anyone has written down, in one place, the work they already knew the land was doing.

## the unit: one parcel account

The hire returns one account for one parcel, with four readings in it.

| reading | what it is | what it is not |
|---|---|---|
| **stocks** | The living systems standing on the parcel, and the condition each is in | The deed, the improvements, a timber cruise priced for sale |
| **flows** | The work those systems do in a year, by kind | This year's cash rent or crop check |
| **natural cap rate** | The year's living work set beside what it would take to keep that condition, not beside the deed price | A cap rate on the sale price |
| **value gap** | A year of living work the sale price does not carry, not a sum to add to the deed | A claim that the gap is what the land is worth |

What the account does not return matters as much. It is not a loan appraisal, a tax appraisal, or an appraisal for a conservation easement deduction. It does not tell you what the land is worth. It tells you what the living systems on it are doing, in a form a lender, a buyer, an heir, or a board can read.

## what a natural asset appraisal is, and what we are not

People search for a **natural asset appraisal** when they want what this post describes: a professional reading of the natural systems on a property, with a number attached. The phrase names the gap.

We do not use it for the engagement itself, for a straight reason. Appraisal is a licensed profession with its own standards. A lender, a tax authority, and a court each require the appraiser the statute names, working to those standards. We are not that appraiser and do not pretend to be. Your appraisal still happens, with the licensed professional, on the question it is built to answer.

What we deliver is a valuation of the living work and the ecosystem service account inside it. It sits beside the appraisal file and does not replace, amend, or argue with it. The two numbers answer different questions about the same ground, and a careful owner wants both.

Nothing on this page is tax, legal, or investment advice; your attorney, accountant, and licensed appraiser remain the people for those questions.

## how the hire goes

You name the parcel. We do the rest.

1. **Name the parcel.** A county parcel number, a legal description, or a boundary on a map. One parcel per account.
2. **Send what you have.** The appraisal, if you are willing to share it. Any soils, timber, water, or wildlife surveys. Management history: what has been grazed, cut, drained, planted, or left alone, and when. This is how we read condition, and condition is most of the work. We also use imagery. When the parcel needs it, someone walks it. We do not publish a timeline or a fee.
3. **We build the account.** We identify the stocks, assess the condition of each, apply the published values, adjust, and sum, then check the result against what we can see and what you have told us.
4. **You receive the four readings** and a plain-language read-through of what they mean for your parcel and your decision.

Scope follows the parcel. A single stock on a small tract is a different job than five stocks across a working ranch. We quote after we see it, and we say so up front rather than publish a number that fits no one.

## if you do not own the parcel

Investors and capital providers ask for the same account on land they are underwriting, lending against, or carrying in a portfolio. The unit does not change: one parcel, four readings, with the owner at the table, beside whatever appraisal the deal already requires. What changes is who orders it and what they do with the value gap once they can see it. If that is you, start at [solutions for investors](/solutions/investors?from=guide&topic=nature-valuation) or [solutions for capital providers](/solutions/capital-providers?from=guide&topic=nature-valuation). Both pages list the valuation service and open onto the same door.

## frequently asked questions

### what is a natural asset appraisal?

A natural asset appraisal is the everyday name for a professional valuation of the living systems on a property and the work they do each year. In practice it is an ecosystem service account: which ecosystem stocks are on the parcel, what condition they are in, and what flows they produce. It is not a licensed real estate appraisal and does not price the deed. The licensed appraisal does that. This account reads the living work beside it.

### how do i hire a valuation of the living work on my land?

Open the door at [contact](/contact?from=guide&topic=nature-valuation) and name the parcel: county and parcel number, or a boundary. We will ask for whatever surveys, history, and appraisal you are willing to share, scope the engagement to the parcel, and quote it. Natural capital valuation is on the [landowners page](/solutions/landowners?from=guide&topic=nature-valuation). Both that service and ecosystem service accounting are on the [nature finance list](/services#finance).

### what do i receive?

One parcel account with four readings: stocks (the living systems on the ground and their condition), flows (the work they do in a year, by kind), a natural cap rate (that year's work set beside the cost of protecting it), and a value gap (the living work the sale price does not carry). You also receive a plain-language read-through so the account can travel into a sale, a loan, an estate, or a board meeting without us in the room.

### does this replace my real estate appraisal?

No. Your appraisal still happens, with the licensed appraiser, for the lender, the tax authority, or the court that requires it. Our account answers a different question about the same ground and sits beside that file. The two together give you the deed's price and the land's work. Either one alone leaves one of those questions unanswered.

## hire it

You already know the land is doing work the file does not carry. You have known it longer than we have. What has been missing is an account that writes it down, in a form the people around the table can read, without pretending the number is the place.

That is the engagement. One parcel. Stocks, flows, a natural cap rate, a value gap. Beside the appraisal, not instead of it.

Start on the [landowners page](/solutions/landowners?from=guide&topic=nature-valuation) to see the service beside the rest of what we do for people who hold land, or go straight to the door and name the parcel.

[hire the valuation →](/contact?from=guide&topic=nature-valuation)

## sources

[Ecosystem Services Valuation Database (ESVD)](https://www.esvd.net/) — the published record of ecosystem service values by biome and service that benefit-transfer methods draw from

[de Groot et al., "Global estimates of the value of ecosystems and their services in monetary units," Ecosystem Services (2012)](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2012.07.005) — the per-hectare-per-year framing of ecosystem service value by biome

[UN System of Environmental-Economic Accounting, Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA)](https://seea.un.org/ecosystem-accounting) — the international standard that separates ecosystem extent, condition, and service flows from monetary valuation

[The Appraisal Foundation, USPAP](https://www.appraisalfoundation.org/) — the standards licensed real estate appraisers in the United States work to

[The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB)](https://teebweb.org/) — the framework for making nature's values visible in decisions

## the series

1. [what a real estate appraisal prices](/guide/what-a-real-estate-appraisal-prices?from=guide)
2. [what ecosystem valuation counts](/guide/what-ecosystem-valuation-counts?from=guide)
3. [what environmental valuation is](/guide/what-environmental-valuation-is?from=guide)
4. [how ecosystem services get a number](/guide/how-ecosystem-services-get-a-number?from=guide)
5. [hire a natural asset valuation](/guide/hire-a-natural-asset-valuation?from=guide)