The monthly newsletter · Issue #1
"Extortion" is a strong word. So is 37,000.
A lender called our 2022 fees extortion. Here's what the numbers actually say, and why it matters to you.
Hey friend,
A while back I saw a company quote a lender executive describing the 2022 appraisal shortage this way: "We were extorted." The same post said appraisers crossed state lines to charge $5,000 for $700 assignments, and that only 37,000 of us are left, down from 55,000 in 2015.
If you worked through 2020 to 2022, you probably felt that one in your gut. I did. So I went and checked the math.
The ASC's National Registry shows roughly 91,000 active credentials. Many of us hold licenses in more than one state, so strip out the duplicates and a 2025 analysis of the ASC's own data puts us at about 66,700 unique active appraisers. A June 2025 pull landed at 64,656, with 45,467 doing residential work.
The 37,000 figure almost certainly comes from Freddie Mac's Appraiser Capacity report, which counts unique license numbers submitting through the UCDP each month. That's a real number. It measures GSE-active mortgage appraisers, not the profession. And the 2015 baseline? The Appraisal Institute's figure for that period was about 78,500, not 55,000.
So the shortage story doesn't disappear. It just gets more precise.
Then there's the word itself. Extortion means coercion. It's a felony. What happened during that volume surge was demand outrunning capacity. Some of us raised fees and turn times. Some of us drove long distances to take assignments local appraisers couldn't touch. Were some fees high? Sure. But a fee someone is free to accept or decline isn't a crime. It's a market responding to supply, travel, complexity, risk, and time pressure.
The conversation actually worth having is about capacity. Lenders should be building relationships with competent local appraisers, communicating better, and paying reasonable and customary fees now, before the next volume swing. With UAD 3.6 rolling in, the cracks from the last two years are likely to show again.
And for us, there's a lesson that cuts both ways. We live and die by supported conclusions. We'd never put an unsourced number in a report. We shouldn't accept one in a sales pitch either. Ask for the source. Ask what's being counted: credentials, unique appraisers, residential appraisers, GSE-active appraisers, or one company's panel.
A few things to sit with this week:
- When you read an industry statistic, do you check what it's actually counting before you repeat it?
- How did you price your work during 2020 to 2022, and could you explain that reasoning to a skeptical lender today?
- Are you building the kind of client relationships that hold up when the next volume swing hits?
The shortage is real. So is the shortage of people checking their math before hitting publish. Let's not be part of the second one.
Talk soon,
Ben Longshore
Ben's Appraisal
Want this in your inbox every month?
Subscribe free