Appraisal

Three Classifications,
One Body of Knowledge

Licensed Residential, Certified Residential and Certified General — each 125 questions in its own time limit, each built to its own content outline, and all three on the same subscription as the licensing exams.

The qualifying education and experience hours are the Appraiser Qualifications Board’s and your state’s. We are the exam preparation and nothing else.

The shapes

The Three Exams, as Published

One examination in three classifications, each with its own content outline and its own time.
The content outlines were updated for sittings from April 1, 2026.

Licensed Residential

125 questions · 4 hours

One-to-four-unit residential property below the complexity and value thresholds. The entry classification, and the one where the published first-time failure rate is highest — roughly one candidate in three, on the last figures the board published.

Certified Residential

125 questions · 4 hours

One-to-four-unit residential without the value limits, which is most of the residential work that pays. The same four hours as the licensed exam over a broader and deeper outline.

Certified General

125 questions · 6 hours

All property types, including the commercial and income-producing work. Six hours, and the income approach is no longer a section you can survive by half-knowing.

Each examination is 125 questions of which 110 are scored and 15 are unscored pretest items. Delivery is through the vendor your state’s appraiser board uses, and the fee, the scheduling and the eligibility determination are all theirs. Confirm the current shape and the current outline with your state board before you plan around anything on this page.

How you practice

The Three Approaches, on Workbenches That Check Themselves

Valuation is arithmetic with judgment attached, and the arithmetic is where a wrong adjustment quietly becomes a wrong opinion of value.
So the grids here recompute rather than assert.

Sales comparison, on a real adjustment grid

Build the grid, make the adjustments, and be told when one went the wrong direction — which is the single most common error in this approach and the one a printed example cannot catch you at. The reconciled indication is computed from what you entered, not printed underneath it.

Cost approach, with the depreciation that trips people

Reproduction against replacement, the three kinds of depreciation, and the land value handled separately. Physical, functional and external are easy to define and hard to apply, and applying them is the part the exam tests.

Income approach, on sets that recompute

Potential and effective gross income, vacancy and collection loss, operating expenses, net operating income, capitalization and the discounted sets — each figure derived from the one above it, so a wrong expense assumption is visible where it lands rather than only in the final number.

Standards lookup, not standards memorization

Find the governing standard, rule or definition in a simulated reference browser — the skill an appraiser actually uses, and a different skill from reciting one. USPAP^® is the reference; the practice is locating the provision that governs the situation in front of you.

The new residential report form

The redesigned uniform residential appraisal report is a genuine change to how a residential assignment is documented, and the transition is live. The report material here is built to the current form, not to the one that is being retired.

Reconciliation, written and graded

Not “which approach gets the most weight” as a multiple-choice question, but the narrative that says why — written by you and graded against a rubric that is shown to you before you start.

The sideways carry

If You Are Already Licensed,
You Are Not Starting From Zero

Value and appraisal is one of the eight sections of the national licensing portion, and legal descriptions is another.
Both of them are where the appraiser exams begin.

A licensee moving toward an appraiser classification already owns a real share of the material — property rights and interests, legal descriptions, the vocabulary of value, the basics of the three approaches, and the arithmetic underneath all of it. Because it is one profile rather than two products, what you proved on the licensing exam is still proven, and the engine spends your evenings on what is genuinely new: the depth of the approaches, the standards, the report, and the statistics the certified levels expect.

What we cannot help with, said plainly: the qualifying education hours — 150, 200 or 300 depending on classification — and the experience hours under a supervisory appraiser, which run from 1,000 to 3,000. Those come from approved providers and from a supervisor, they are set by the Appraiser Qualifications Board and your state board, and nothing in this subscription counts toward either. A separate eight-hour course on valuation bias and fair housing is required of new applicants; that is also not us. We are what you use once you are eligible to sit.

About the Appraiser Exams

Do you provide the qualifying education hours?

No. The 150, 200 or 300 qualifying hours are approved-provider education set by the Appraiser Qualifications Board and administered through your state board, and nothing here counts toward them. This is exam preparation, which is a different product from the hours — and you need the hours before you are permitted to sit at all.

Do you deliver the national standards course?

No. The 15-hour national course on the standards and its examination are delivered by instructors certified for that purpose, and we are not among them. We teach the standards as examination content — what they require, and how to find the provision that governs a situation — which is a different thing from the course and is not a substitute for it.

Can you help me log or find experience hours?

No. Experience hours are earned under a supervisory appraiser and logged and verified through your state board’s process. We have no part in it, we do not verify anything, and anyone offering to shortcut that part of the path is offering you a problem rather than a service.

Which classification should I sit?

That depends on the work you intend to do and on the education and experience you have completed, and your state board is the authority on your eligibility for each. All three exams are included in the subscription, so the decision does not have to be made at purchase — and a candidate who moves up later does not repurchase anything.

How hard are these exams?

The board’s own published figures put first-time failure at roughly one in three for the licensed residential exam and roughly one in four for the two certified classifications. Those are the board’s numbers about its own candidates, not a claim about ours — we have no candidates yet and will not be publishing a pass rate we cannot substantiate.

The Appraiser Exams Are Included

$39/mo month to month, or $31/mo on annual billing. Launching Monday, May 17, 2027.

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Three Classifications,One Body of Knowledge