Who May Sign a Value Opinion: An Ontology of Apex Signing Authority in 134 Jurisdictions

Abstract

Every jurisdiction that regulates who may value has its own ontology of appraisers: its own classes of persons who may lawfully sign a value opinion, its own number of tiers, and its own axis for cutting them—by value in the United States, by purpose in Germany, by asset class in India, by the assignment rather than the person in Brazil, and not at all in Japan. This article records those native ontologies for the 134 jurisdictions in this Journal's coverage roster—in full for eight reference regimes and in summary for the rest—and annotates each class against one shared reference ontology of facets: a scope level (trainee, restricted, general) with two independent status facets (regulated-purpose register; court or sworn), read both de jure and de facto; who enforces the effective gate; how the class is constituted; and a structured entry path—education gate, an examination rigor index, experience, appointment and years. The key findings are these: the education gate is a specific degree in 96 of the 115 regimes for which it is known, and any bachelor's degree is accepted in three: the United States, Canada outside Quebec, and Puerto Rico. Examination rigor peaks in East Asia, and the United States is the only regime in which a low-rigor state license examination sits beneath a rigorous private one. On the entry recipe alone—education, examination, years, practitioner density and collateral demand—the regimes fall into two large families that cut across the types: a mortgage-market family, in which lending requires a per-loan appraisal as a matter of routine and the examination is moderate, and a state-examination family, in which it does not and the examination is harder. The line between a ministry register and a chartered body is invisible on those facets, and the clustering does not recover the typology (Adjusted Rand Index 0.14). The United States sits in the mortgage-market family beside Canada, the United Kingdom and Ireland; what sets it apart is a single facet, the apex split: the class the statute places at the top and the class that in practice manages the upper market are different, and in the American case the managing class is a private designation with no footing in licensing law, resting on the lowest-rigor state examination in the roster. Fifteen other regimes split the apex, and Canada, Australia and Hong Kong likewise pair a statute with a professional body; the United States differs in degree, not in kind—it and Puerto Rico, which shares its license and examination, alone combine a managing class with no footing in licensing law and a state examination of the lowest rigor in the roster.