Newz: GSEs New Info on Completing UAD 3.6,
2026 Appraiser Survey: State of the Profession
July 3, 2026
What’s in This Newsletter (In Order, Scroll Down)
- LIA AD: Buyer Wants Lower Price to Negotiate
- 2026 Appraiser Survey: State of the Profession By Isaac Peck, Publisher, WorkingRe
- Abandoned 1822 Federal-Style Estate That Was Relocated and Then Carefully Rebuilt Hits the Market for $1.6 Million
- Can (Should) AI Replace Your Office Staff? By Dustin Harris
- MY AD: UAD 3.6 and the “ Tablet “ Question
- Fannie/Freddie Job Aids for Completing URARs Using UAD 3.6
- FHA Updates for QC requirements for Appraisal Field Reviews
- Mortgage applications increased 0.04 percent from one week earlier
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2026 Appraiser Survey: State of the Profession
By Isaac Peck, Publisher, WorkingRe
Excerpts: Nearly one-third of all practicing appraisers plan to leave the profession within three years. Add the next cohort and roughly half intend to exit within the next five years.
Those are the headline numbers from Working RE‘s 2026 State of the Profession Survey, completed by approximately 1,800 appraisers nationwide in early 2026.
Before the retirement cliff narrative takes hold, consider this: Working RE ran a nearly identical question in its 2016 Future of Appraising Survey. At that time, 33 percent of respondents planned to retire within five years, and more than half within 10 years. Today, a decade later, most of them are still appraising.
The pattern goes back further still. In a 2009 Working RE survey (18 years ago), conducted at the bottom of the financial crisis with over 6,200 respondents, over 53 percent of appraisers said they did not expect to be appraising full-time five years from then. While the profession did see some attrition over the next five years due to the incredibly slow market that followed the 2008 real estate crash, the fallout was nowhere close to 50 percent of the profession, or even 25 percent.
Appraisers consistently overpredict their own demise.
Different This Time?
Working RE spoke with Jim Park, President of the Collateral Risk Network (CRN) and the former Executive Director of the Appraisal Subcommittee, to get his read on the survey findings. Park says the 2026 numbers reflect a genuine inflection point, not a repeat of the false alarms that preceded them.
“This time it’s different,” Park says. “We’ve reached a point where a number of things are happening at the same time. The average age of an appraiser has to be in the range of 60 to 65. That’s retirement age. On top of that, depending on who you talk to, 10 to 25 percent of appraisers could cease doing mortgage work because of UAD 3.6 alone. How many will ultimately adapt to the new form? How many will come back after sitting it out? We’ll see. But I’m more concerned about the lack of new people getting into the business than I am about the people who might leave.”
UAD 3.6: The Readiness Gap
The November 2, 2026 mandatory compliance deadline for UAD 3.6 is roughly four months away. While Working RE‘s survey ended March 15 (three months prior to this publication), even if we account for a rapid ramp up, the data suggests that the profession is not ready.
The Takeaway
Taken together, the 2026 survey describes a profession that is older and more experienced than it has ever been. Appraisers remain skeptical of hybrid products, are divided on credentialing, and approaching one of the most significant form changes in decades largely untrained. The retirement numbers are alarming on their face but unconvincing as a cliff narrative. Working RE‘s own historical data makes that case directly.
What the 2026 data cannot tell us is whether UAD 3.6 will finally push appraisers into retirement in a way that past challenges failed to do.
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My comments: Very interesting. Worth reading. Many topics with graphs and other data. The only recent appraiser survey I have seen.