How to determine property value at beginning and end of a partnership

[John S.]

If I've miseed a previous forum on this topic please direct me to it as I couldn't easily find it.

My situation is that I have a rental property which I've purchased for cash and wish to continue holding. I would like to get some financing for it but I'm pretty much maxed out on my mortgages. I've found a partner who is willing to co-sign in exchange for a share of the profits including appreciation.

My question is how do we determine the property value at the beginning and at the end of the partnership to determine the appreciation? At the beginning I was considering using the appraisal value from the lender as well as one of my own and averaging the price. If we sell, that will make the exit price easy to determine, but it's more likely that at some point I will refinance the property rather than sell. At that time, I was considering having one appraisal ordered by me, and one ordered by my partner then taking the average to determine the exit value before we part ways.

Does anyone have any good suggestions as to fair, objective ways to determine the values? I want the process to be very transparent so that my partner won't have any doubts that I cheated him in determining appreciation profits.

Thanks for any comments!