Put a defensible dollar value on a house, a farm or an office tower. Banks will not lend without you.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
Programs in the fields this career usually comes through. Each has its own page: what it takes to get in, the courses you need and what it costs.
The median pay is about $73,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $55,000 at the lower end to about $112,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
4 to 7 years after high school, on the usual route.
$30,000 to $58,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
It depends where you work. You need a licence, certificate or registration in Nova Scotia. Elsewhere there is none to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Moderate demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$73,000
Lower end
$55,000
Upper end
$112,000
Job Bank's national median is $35 an hour, about $73,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The lower end ($26.37) and upper end ($54) are the bottom and top of the wage range for everyone in the group. The page also covers municipal assessors and business valuators. Many appraisers are self-employed and paid per report.
$40.63 an hour
The Job Bank median in Alberta, the highest of any province
Saskatchewan is $38, Ontario $33.65, and Quebec is lowest at $30.15. Candidates often earn a share of each report fee rather than a salary, so the first year can be thin.
Roughly, all in
$30,000 to $58,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a cheaper undergraduate degree plus the appraisal courses through UBC (University of British Columbia), taken online and part time while you work. The high end is a full price degree, the whole course sequence, candidate membership in the AIC (Appraisal Institute of Canada) for the years it takes, and your first errors and omissions insurance. The appraisal courses are a small part of the bill, the degree is most of it. Because the course years are usually worked years, the debt is front loaded into the degree.
The degree is the big cost. Most candidates earn while they complete the appraisal courses part time.
Fee per report
Most residential appraisers. Banks and lenders order the reports.
Salary
Municipal assessment offices, banks and large firms.
Fee split
Candidates typically keep a percentage of each report and the supervising appraiser keeps the rest.
Owning a firm
The most risk: work dries up when interest rates rise and sales slow.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
A degree, online appraisal courses, then years of supervised reports.
High school diploma
Grade 12
Math, business and English. Strong writing matters: an appraisal is a long written argument.
University degree
4 years
The Appraisal Institute of Canada's main candidate path requires a Canadian university degree. Business, commerce, economics or urban studies fit best. There is a student path for people without a degree that takes longer.
Appraisal courses
1 to 3 years, part time
The Institute's courses are delivered online through UBC (University of British Columbia). Graduates with a business or commerce degree can take an accelerated route through UBC's Post-Graduate Certificate in Real Property Valuation.
Candidate work under a mentor
2 to 3 years
Join a firm as a candidate. Every report you write is reviewed and co-signed by a designated appraiser until you qualify.
Designation
After the courses and experience
CRA (Canadian Residential Appraiser) for houses, condos and small residential; AACI (Accredited Appraiser Canadian Institute) for every property type including commercial and farmland.
Math
Income capitalization and comparable sales analysis are arithmetic done carefully.
English
Reports run dozens of pages and get challenged in court.
Business and economics
Interest rates and markets drive value.
Geography
Zoning, land use and neighbourhoods.
In Nova Scotia you must be registered with the Nova Scotia Real Estate Appraisers Association to appraise real estate. Quebec protects only the title chartered appraiser (Ordre des évaluateurs agréés du Québec), and Alberta and Saskatchewan regulate assessor titles. In the other provinces there is no licence, but banks and lenders will only accept reports from appraisers holding a recognized designation, mainly the AACI (Accredited Appraiser Canadian Institute) or CRA (Canadian Residential Appraiser) from the Appraisal Institute of Canada, or the DAR (Designated Appraiser Residential) from CNAREA (Canadian National Association of Real Estate Appraisers). So in practice you need the letters.
Quebec protects the title through a professional order, and the route runs through one of three recognized bachelor's degrees, a 48 week internship and the order's own exam.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
Keep your math strong. The business degrees that lead to the title ask for college calculus.
DEC (Diploma of College Studies)
2 or 3 years
A 2 year pre-university program at a CEGEP (public college), such as Social Science (300.A1) with math, or a 3 year business technical DEC with the required math courses.
A recognized bachelor's degree
3 years
A business degree with a real estate concentration from UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal), Université Laval or UQO (Université du Québec en Outaouais). 90 credits, in French.
Register as an intern with the order
During the degree
The OEAQ (Ordre des évaluateurs agréés du Québec, the Quebec order of chartered appraisers). Possible once you have 75 credits and a chartered appraiser agrees to supervise you.
48 week paid internship
48 weeks
Full time under your supervisor: inspections, land value and all three appraisal methods. You must also take the order's professional obligations course.
Pass the admission exam
After the internship
Once a year in September, in three parts: appraisal methods, professional obligations and an oral presentation. Pass mark 65%. You have 5 years from becoming an intern.
Quebec also trains appraisal technicians at college. The DEC (Diploma of College Studies) in Technologie de l'estimation et de l'évaluation en bâtiment (building estimation and appraisal technology, 221.D0) has a real estate appraisal option and takes about 3 years. It leads to technician jobs, not to the chartered appraiser permit, which needs one of the three recognized bachelor's degrees or an equivalence granted by the order.
Order fees include taxes. University tuition is extra. The internship is paid.
Things you don't need, but that help.
AACI (Accredited Appraiser Canadian Institute)
The full designation. Lets you appraise commercial, industrial, agricultural and special-use property.
CRA (Canadian Residential Appraiser)
Residential up to four units. Faster to earn, and the bulk of lender work.
Machinery and equipment or farm specialization
Niche work with few competitors.
Expert witness work
Testifying on value in divorces, expropriations and tax appeals is paid by the hour.
A driver's licence and a reliable car
You inspect properties all day, often in rural areas.
Real estate or construction experience
Job Bank notes some appraisers come from years as a real estate agent or property administrator.
Spreadsheet and mapping skills
Comparable sales databases and GIS (geographic information system) tools are daily tools.
French
Quebec has its own order of chartered appraisers; bilingual appraisers can work both markets.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Morning: drive to two or three properties. Measure the building, photograph every room, note the roof, the furnace, the cracks. Afternoon: back at the desk, pull recent sales of similar properties, adjust for differences, and write the report with your value conclusion and reasoning. Calls from a bank asking why a value came in below the purchase price. For commercial work, a single report can take weeks of rent rolls, leases and market research.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
The Appraisal Institute of Canada grants the CRA (Canadian Residential Appraiser) for single-family homes, townhouses up to four units, condos and residential land, and the AACI (Accredited Appraiser Canadian Institute) for every kind of property, from farms to machinery to office buildings.
The Appraisal Institute of Canada's education is delivered online through UBC (University of British Columbia), so a candidate in Halifax and one in Calgary take the same courses.
Job Bank counts about 17,200 real estate appraisers, assessors and valuators in Canada in 2023, and 35% of them are 50 or older.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Property first, then the rest of the field. See every career in business and money.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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