About

Brian Allen, Principal

Brian Allen is the principal of LHM Valuation Group. He works on valuation problems where the disciplines have to talk to each other: real-property appraisal, business valuation, capital-structure analysis, and the reporting or dispute context that frames them all.

Brian Allen, Principal of LHM Valuation Group

Independent valuation at the intersection of real property and enterprise value.

Brian Allen has spent 15 years across the disciplines that LHM now integrates. He began his career in institutional commercial real estate at Eastdil Secured, where he worked on hospitality, office, and mixed-use transactions for institutional sponsors and lenders. He moved into corporate finance at AECOM, serving as Chief of Staff to the Chief Executive Officer through a period of meaningful capital-structure activity.

Most recently, Brian led complex business and securities valuation engagements for audit teams, PE-backed acquirers, estate counsel, and litigation counsel: ASC 805 purchase price allocations and other M&A transaction work, 409As with complex cap structures, ASC 820 portfolio valuations, large estate planning portfolios, and expert witness damages analyses. Cannabis operators and licensed facilities have been a recurring part of that work. LHM is built around the kind of overlap cases the dual-discipline approach was made for.

LHM is built on a single thesis: most valuation engagements fall cleanly into one discipline, and the challenging ones do not. The firm's job is to handle the second category with the same care that single-discipline firms bring to the first.

Credentials

Licenses and standing.

  • Certified General Real Estate Appraiser

    State of California.

  • ASA Candidate, Business Valuation

    American Society of Appraisers. BV credential in progress.

  • USPAP-current

    15-hour USPAP refresher current as of most recent cycle.

Selected representative experience

Engagement types.

  • ASC 805 PPAs across hospitality, healthcare, technology, and consumer industries
  • M&A transaction work, from pre-transaction valuation through purchase price allocation and post-close impairment analysis
  • 409A valuations for venture-backed companies with complex capital structures
  • Going-concern appraisals across hotels, senior living, cannabis, and specialized industrial assets
  • Estate and gift valuations for large estate planning portfolios, property-rich operating companies, and holding companies
  • Expert witness damages analyses and testimony in valuation disputes
  • Portfolio and ASC 820 valuations for funds and family offices

Methodology

A disciplined process for complex assignments.

  1. 01

    Define scope and context.

    Before any analytical work begins, LHM scopes the engagement against the standard the report will face: audit, tax, fiduciary, lender, or dispute. Methodology calibrated to the wrong audience is the most common cause of avoidable rework.

  2. 02

    Isolate value components.

    Real property, operating entity, intangibles, working capital, debt and capital structure. Each component is identified and approached with the right method. Components that interact get explicit reconciliation.

  3. 03

    Evaluate interactions.

    Where the disciplines overlap, where double-counting risks live, where allocation methodology matters. This is where dual-discipline experience matters most.

  4. 04

    Deliver defensible analysis.

    Report tailored to the review audience, support schedules built for scrutiny, and review-response capacity maintained for the engagement's lifecycle.

Direct

Reach Brian directly.