Josephine Baxter Raval

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UNITED STATES BANKRUPTCY COURT
NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
In re

JOSEPHINE BAXTER RAVAL,

Debtor.

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Bankruptcy Case
No. 25-30625-DM

Chapter 13

MEMORANDUM DECISION ON MOTION TO VALUE

I. Introduction
Josephine Baxter Raval (“Debtor”) filed her Chapter 13 case
on August 7, 2025 (the “Petition Date”). Debtor owns property
at 108 Valleyview Way, South San Francisco, California (the
“Property”).
Debtor filed a Motion to Value Collateral Under Sections
506 and 3012 (“Motion”) on March 26, 2026. The Motion included
an appraisal (the “Bonjean Appraisal”) that determined the
Property as of the Petition Date was valued at $1,467,000. The
basis of this appraisal was a physical examination of the
outside and inside of the Property that took place on June 2,
2025, just over two months before the Petition Date.
________________________________________
DENNIS MONTALI
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge
Signed and Filed: August 9, 2026
Entered on Docket
August 10, 2026
EDWARD J. EMMONS, CLERK
U.S. BANKRUPTCY COURT
NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
Case: 25-30625 Doc# 49 Filed: 08/09/26 Entered: 08/10/26 09:12:59 Page 1 of 7

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Creditor MEB Loan Trust VIII (“Creditor”) filed an
Opposition (Dkt. 26) and on June 15, 2026, the parties submitted
a Joint Stipulation Regarding Submission of Motion to Value
Collateral (Dkt. 37) (“Stipulation”). Pursuant to the
Stipulation, Creditor filed its Supplemental Opposition to the
Motion on July 17, 2026 (Dkt. 43) and the Declaration of Rhonda
De Los Santos in Support of Supplemental Opposition (Dkt.
44)(the “De Los Santos Appraisal”). The De Los Santos Appraisal
fixed a Petition Date value of the Property of $1,775,000.
Included was a One-Unit Residential Appraisal Field Review
Report (Dkt. 44-3) that, despite its title, appears to be in the
nature of a rebuttal by Ms. De Los Santos to the Bonjean
Appraisal (the “Rebuttal”). It states a June 2, 2025 value of
$1,750,000 but does not make an adjustment based on the Petition
Date that occurred a little over two months later. The De Los
Santos Appraisal was conducted with a physical inspection of the
outside and inside of the Property on June 26, 2026.
The Stipulation did allow for later filings but said
nothing about rebuttal testimony. Debtor did not object or
attempt to offer anything in the nature of a sur-rebuttal.
The issue before the court is the value of the Property as
of the Petition Date. Based upon the evidence summarized below,
the court finds that the value of the Property as of the
Petition Date is $1,675,000.
II. Discussion
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The following discussion constitutes the court's findings of
fact and conclusions of law. Fed. R. Bankr. P. 7052(a).
Case: 25-30625 Doc# 49 Filed: 08/09/26 Entered: 08/10/26 09:12:59 Page 2 of 7

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The parties agreed in the Stipulation that supplemental or
responsive declarations could be filed on July 24, 2026 (for
Debtor) and July 31, 2026 (for Creditor). Each filed additional
papers on those dates. The only later-filed document requiring
comment is in Debtor’s Reply (Dkt. 46) filed on July 24, 2026.
There, Debtor takes issue with the idea that a more reliable
factual foundation can be found upon an appraisal conducted
before the Petition Date, rather than one after. The apparent
distinction appears because such a later appraisal expressly
assumes that the Property remains substantially in the same
condition throughout that period.
This argument adds nothing. Both sides waived the right to
cross-examine the other side’s appraiser. Appraisals that are
offered to dispute valuations presented by debtors filing
bankruptcy necessarily must be prepared after the fact. The
more telling information is the reliance by an appraiser on
comparable sales closely before or closely after that date.
They consider many other variables such as time and location of
comparable sales that go into their analyses.
For this reason, the court does not suspect or believe that
the timing of either appraisal indicates more or less
reliability; the key is in the validity and credibility of the
information gleaned by and analyzed by the appraiser.
As a separate matter, Debtor argues that retrospective
appraisals are less reliable because conditions that must be
assumed by the appraiser must also be similar to those extant as
of an earlier date, here, the Petition Date. More particularly,
Debtor takes issue with the De Los Santos Appraisal assigning a
Case: 25-30625 Doc# 49 Filed: 08/09/26 Entered: 08/10/26 09:12:59 Page 3 of 7

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C3 condition (higher value) to the Property, whereas the Bonjean
Appraisal assigned a C4 condition (lower value). Debtor argues
that the De Los Santos appraisal necessarily could not have
observed the condition close to the petition date. She
questions the assumption that the C3 condition existed as of
that date. But Debtor offers no evidence to rebut the
conclusion that C3 is the more accurate condition and offers no
evidence that the Property was improved after the Petition Date
but before the De Los Santos Appraisal was conducted.
The same is true with the De Los Santos upgrade of the
quality of the Property from Q4 (lower value) to Q3 (higher
value), differing with the Bonjean Appraisal. The De Los Santos
Appraisal did add brief descriptive terms to explain these
adjustments.
In general, the De Los Santos Appraisal is more reliable
for multiple reasons. To begin with, the Property has a gross
living area of 2,173 square feet. Even with a cautious figure
of $800 per square foot, lower than all of the comparables on
the same street, a value of over $1,700,000 is indicated.
Next, the Bonjean Appraisal gives the heaviest weight to
Comparable #1, a property on Tipperary Avenue in South San
Francisco, four tenths of a mile away. Yet that property is 62
years old (rather than 45 years for the Property) and sold at
$625 per square foot for a total price of $1,400,000 nearly
eight months prior to the Petition Date. It is farther away
from the four comparables on the same street as the Property.
In contrast, both appraisers evaluated three of the same parcels
on the same street as the Property, located at 117, 130 and 163
Case: 25-30625 Doc# 49 Filed: 08/09/26 Entered: 08/10/26 09:12:59 Page 4 of 7

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Valleyview Way. The De Los Santos Appraisal included 115
Valleyview Way, also on the same street. These two
considerations make the Bonjean Appraisal somewhat suspect.
Comparing the four homes on the same street as the
Property, three of them are the same in total bedrooms and
bathrooms, and slightly smaller in square footage. 163
Valleyview Way sold in December 2024, is smaller than the
Property by more than 200 square feet, and commanded a price of
$1,600,000.
That said, the De Los Santos Appraisal presents some
problems of its own. It relies on two houses not on Valleyview
and only one (No. 115) on it. Yet the Rebuttal states that Ms.
De Los Santos eliminated one comparable and added one, when she
actually eliminated two and added three. The court can only
speculate about these discrepancies, but they do raise doubts.
Further, the court concludes that the highly subjective
ratings of quality of construction (Q3 v Q4) and condition (C3 v
C4) are the most important factors that separate the two
appraisers’ conclusions. Ms. De Los Santos did make some
comments about improvements in the Property and pointed out that
Mr. Bonjean did not. From these very brief statements, and a
review of a handful of photographs of the Property and the
comparables, the court concludes that Ms. De Los Santos’ labels
are more reflective of the Petition Date value of the Property.
The Bonjean Appraisal’s conclusion is not justified to support
the lower value given these concerns.
Taking all of the evidence presented into account and
making adjustments based upon these observations, the
Case: 25-30625 Doc# 49 Filed: 08/09/26 Entered: 08/10/26 09:12:59 Page 5 of 7

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preponderance of the evidence results in a finding that the
Property had a value as of the Petition Date of $1,675,000.

*** END OF MEMORANDUM DECISION ***

Case: 25-30625 Doc# 49 Filed: 08/09/26 Entered: 08/10/26 09:12:59 Page 6 of 7

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COURT SERVICE LIST
ECF Recipients
Case: 25-30625 Doc# 49 Filed: 08/09/26 Entered: 08/10/26 09:12:59 Page 7 of 7