This article explores the landscape of U.S. real estate appraisers — how many are licensed, who they work for, and how many are actively completing residential appraisal assignments to support the mortgage industry.
As of June 2025, there are 64,656 real estate appraisers operating with 91,259 active state licenses across the United States.
Real Estate Appraiser Company Affiliations
Real estate appraisers can record the company or companies to which they are affiliated when submitting their state licensing credentials. This affiliation can be as a full-time or part-time employee, a contractor or self-employed.
Analysis shows that US appraisers work for over 14,000 distinct organizations, including appraisal-related, financial institutions, government and other companies providing business services. These include:
- Real Estate Services
- Appraiser, sole proprietor, Residential Appraisal Firm, Appraisal Management Company (AMC) and Commercial Real Estate (CRE) Focused Appraisal Firm
- Financial Lending Institutions
- Banks, Savings & Loans, Credit Unions and Farm Credit
- Government Agency
- Federal – US Departments of the Interior, Forest Service, Defense, Housing & Urban Development, Agriculture, plus Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
- State – Transportation, Public Utilities, Tax and Retirement Systems
- County & City – County Assessors
- Business Services
- Accounting & Tax, Investment Banking, Wealth Management, Management Consulting, Legal Services and Asset Management
Residential Real Estate Appraisers – Total
Of the total 64,656 appraisers, there are 45,467 appraisers supporting residential real estate transactions. The remaining 19,189 appraisers are engaged with commercial real estate firms, financial institutions, government agencies and other business services.
For Certified General appraisers, this indicates that 3,516 are predominantly engaged as residential real estate appraisers, 16,240 are engaged in commercial real estate and the remaining ~1,500 engaged by AMCs and other business services companies.
Residential Real Estate Appraisers – Active
Based on input from residential appraisers who work for appraisal firms, AMCs and other businesses, we conclude that there are currently 38,647 active residential real estate appraisers in the US.
This is the number of appraisers who are completing residential appraisals in-the-field on a weekly basis to support mortgage lending and other forms of housing finance. This factors for appraisers who are engaged primarily in management, supervising and review functions, or for other reasons, not currently completing appraisals.
These conclusions are consistent with the Freddie Mac Appraiser Capacity data referenced below that tracks unique active appraiser licenses submitting to UCDP on a monthly basis.
This indicates that ~80% of appraisers actively work for lenders originating first mortgages using the Uniform Residential Appraisal Report (URAR). Most lenders submit appraisals to UCDP for quality control and scoring even if they do not intend to sell loans to the agencies.
Not seeing what you need? Have questions?
Request more information or a specific report from MtgeFi.com
Data Sources & Analysis
The Appraisal Subcommittee (ASC)
The Appraisal Subcommittee (ASC) oversees the real estate appraisal regulatory framework for federally related transactions. The ASC is a subcommittee of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC).
The ASC provides the AMC Registry to search for Appraisal Management Companies and the Appraiser Registry to search for Appraisers, based on State credentials. The Appraiser Registry collates data nationally from state appraiser licensing boards.
Freddie Mac Appraiser Capacity
Freddie Mac publishes a monthly Appraiser Capacity report that provides data on the volume of appraisals being completed and the number of appraisers completing them.
In June 2025 this showed just over 30,000 active appraiser licenses being used to submit to the Uniform Collateral Data Portal (UCDP) monthly. Additionally, the data is for all appraisal report types submitted to UCDP, not just Fannie Mae URAR 1004 and Freddie Mac URAR 70 ‘traditional appraisal’ forms.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for May 2024, estimates employment of Property Appraisers and Assessors (13-2020) at 59,070, excluding self-employed workers.