What Is Appraisal Experience?
Appraisal experience is difficult to define, especially for appraisers who appraise property less than 100 percent of the time. A few definitions are helpful:

Value—The monetary worth of something
Valuation or Appraisal—The act or process of estimating the value of property
Appraiser—One who appraises
Determine—To come to a decision concerning, as a result of investigation, reasoning, etc.

What Is the Experience Requirement for Accreditation?

To gain appraisal experience, one might join the staff of an organization, large or small, that is an appraisal firm or a firm that engages in appraisal-related activities.

What Is Full-Time-Equivalent Experience?
Appraisal experience is experience in the act or process of estimating value. ASA requires five years of such experience, on a full-time basis, to achieve Accredited Senior Appraiser (ASA) accreditation. Therefore, an appraiser can fulfill the experience requirement for Accredited Senior Appraiser in five years, provided he or she appraises full time. If this is not the case—e.g., if the appraiser spends only 75 percent of his or her time appraising—then more time will be required to achieve five years of full-time experience (for the 75 percent example: 6 years, 8 months).

Consider the example of the antique dealer who spends 80% of his or her time buying, selling, arranging, inspecting, repairing and/or refinishing antique items and 20% of his or her time appraising. It would take this person 5 years to get the equivalent of one year of full-time-equivalent credit for experience.

What Is Collateral Experience?
Evaluation of comparable sales or determination of authenticity is frequently a necessity for the determination of value. When the purpose of that work is to determine value, it is part of appraisal experience. When it’s not, the work is considered collateral experience. The determination of problems in a business, auditing the books of a corporation, authenticating an art object or determining its provenance may or may not be appraisal work. By themselves, not as a part of an appraisal/valuation assignment, these functions are not classified by ASA as appraisal experience. As noted in ASA’s code of ethics, appraisal is the determination of value.

Although collateral experience is extremely important to a professional, it does not qualify as full-time-equivalent appraisal experience and will not be credited as such. An exception is made in the Personal Property and Gems and Jewelry disciplines, ASA accepts five years or more of approved full-time-equivalent collateral experience to be credited for a maximum of one (1) year of full-time appraisal experience.

The following examples are of collateral experience.

	A fine art appraiser’s experience in art restoration or the sale of estate items
	A financial analyst’s experience in determining whether an asset meets specified investment requirements
	A lawyer’s experience acting as a mediator on valuation issues

Please note: The International Board of Examiners will issue a maximum of one year of full-time appraisal experience in the discipline of Business Valuation toward a Candidate’s accreditation if the Candidate has held the CPA designation in public accounting for five years or more. The experience must be in public accounting in order to be equivalent. Official documentation of the experience must be included with the Accreditation Application. A Candidate with five years or more of experience as a CFA or CBI may also receive a maximum of one year of full-time appraisal experience in the discipline of Business Valuation.

Understanding the Appraisal Experience Requirement
Over the years, the American Society of Appraisers has developed some guidelines, policies and concepts of what is, and what is not, appraisal experience. Regrettably, no totally objective formula has yet been devised to quantify an applicant’s full-time appraisal experience. The process is thus both objective and subjective and requires careful and thoughtful analysis by both applicants and examiners.

When a candidate fills out ASA’s Accreditation Application, he or she should supply sufficient information to enable the ASA chapter’s board of examiners and the International Board of Examiners to determine that the applicant does, in fact, meet ASA’s experience requirements. It is the obligation of the candidate to portray the actual, provable experience sufficiently well to allow examiners to quantify that experience in terms of months and years of full-time or full-time-equivalent experience. The examiners must do this in order to meet ASA’s constitutional requirements (see Article IX of the ASA constitution).

Both the local and the international boards of examiners have an obligation to ASA and its certified/designated members to maintain the high standards of professionalism represented by the designations ASA and AM. The International Board of Examiners has the obligation to reject for accreditation any candidate who cannot satisfactorily prove his or her years and months of appraisal experience.