Allocation of Basis of Farmland Improvements

[Michael Deakin]

For all you more experienced RE investors out there, we recently bought a farm which includes a personal residence for our family, several improvements including large buildings and storage facilities for the farm, and the farmland itself.  The buy/sell agreement didn't allocate the purchase price into the different asset classes, nor was the seller interested in filing an IRS form 8594 to separate out the different assets.  I would like to allocate as much as possible to the farmland improvements in order to claim depreciation and as little as possible to the personal residence and farmland. I have an appraisal done by the bank, but it mainly focused on the farmland and I think it undervalues the farmland improvements by a significant margin. The property tax valuations are way off fair market value as well. 

Can I get the improvements re-appraised by a commercial appraiser to determine their fair market value and just use the leftover basis amount to allocate between the house and farmland according to the % used in the original appraisal?

Are there any other options I can suggest to our CPA to justify to the IRS a higher value for the farmland improvements?

**I understand this forum isn't professional counsel