The Appraiser Qualifications Board (AQB) recently adopted a new edition of the Real Property Appraiser Qualification Criteria. The Criteria set qualification standards for real property appraisers in the United States and provide continuing education guidelines for current appraisers to maintain their appraisal license, according to a release from The Appraisal Foundation.
“The pandemic forced everyone to be flexible,” AQB Chair Mark Lewis said in the release. “And the AQB was no exception. We temporarily allowed education which was approved for in-person learning to be converted to online synchronous courses to respond to lockdowns and stay at home orders.
“Over time, the AQB saw a tremendous response from appraisers who were able to take advantage of this new educational opportunity. The AQB is responding to that feedback by making these temporary changes permanent,” Lewis added.
Among the updates included in the newest edition of the Criteria are:
- Synchronous courses will now be considered equivalent to in-person classroom courses.
- Synchronous courses will no longer be required to have delivery mechanism approval under the Criteria and an alternative course delivery mechanism approval for asynchronous courses was introduced.
- Hybrid courses must meet the requirements for each specific course delivery method (e.g., a course that is hybrid synchronous/asynchronous must meet the synchronous requirements for the synchronous portion of the course and the asynchronous requirements for the asynchronous portion of the course).
- Qualifying and continuing education courses may use remote proctoring, including bio-metric proctoring.
These changes will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2022.
The AQB also adopted a General Interpretation of the Criteria to emphasize that education and experience verification must be completed before an applicant is approved to sit for the national exam, and that applicants cannot self-verify their experience to qualify for the national exam.
For more information, go to www.appraisalfoundation.org.