How Many Property Valuations Are Done in Australia Each Year?

Nobody publishes the answer. There is no register, no regulator return, and no industry body that counts how many property valuations are performed in Australia each year — market research firms size the revenue of the valuation sector without ever stating a volume, and the Australian Property Institute reports its 5,000-plus valuers without counting their output. So we built an estimate from the ground up, from primary data on what actually triggers a valuation. This article shows the full working, because the honest version of this number is a range that depends entirely on one question: what counts as a “valuation”?

The short answer: on the order of 1.5 to 2.5 million property valuations and valuation-style assessments are carried out in Australia each year. Of those, roughly 1.3 to 1.6 million are reports produced by a qualified valuer, and perhaps 0.5 to 0.8 million are full, inspected narrative reports. Every input below is sourced; the totals are our estimate, derived as shown.

Why the definition decides the number

“Valuation” spans three quite different things, and lumping them together is why a single figure is impossible:

1. Automated valuation models (AVMs) — a value generated by an algorithm from sales data, with no human valuer and no inspection. Lenders use these to clear low-risk loans in seconds.
2. Valuer reports — a report signed by a qualified valuer. This includes desktop and kerbside assessments (the valuer works from data and photos, or a drive-by, without a full inspection) as well as full inspections.
3. Full narrative reports — the long-form, inspected, purpose-built document used for a court, the ATO, a financial report or a considered purchase.

An AVM and a full Family Court valuation are both called “valuations,” but one is a line of code and the other is a day’s work. Our three-tier answer keeps them separate.

The lending engine

Mortgage lending is by far the largest driver, and it is where automation lives. Two primary ABS series set the scale:

• ~548,000 new housing loan commitments a year (excluding refinancing), worth about $379.6 billion (ABS Lending Indicators, CY2025).
• External refinancing — borrowers switching lenders, which typically triggers a fresh valuation of the security — ran at about 103,800 commitments in the March 2026 quarter alone (66,617 owner-occupier + 37,181 investor), which annualises to roughly 415,000 a year (ABS Lending Indicators; the March quarter was a record, so the true calendar-year figure is a little lower).

Add construction, top-up and internal-refinance valuations and the lending channel generates well over a million valuation events a year. The dominant platform gives an independent cross-check: CoreLogic (now Cotality) estimated it alone completes around one million valuations a year in Australia (2021) — and it is not the only platform lenders use.

Crucially, about half of those are now digital. On CoreLogic’s own platform, AVMs made up 28% of valuations and desktop assessments a further 21% in 2023 — “nearly half of all valuations processed… now digital”, with some online lenders “well over 80%” and AMP Bank reporting “over 60%… completed via AVM or Desktop” (CoreLogic executives, 2023). That single fact is the swing factor in the whole estimate: the more lending shifts to AVMs, the fewer human reports there are, even as transaction numbers rise. (These percentages describe CoreLogic’s platform mix, not an industry census — no regulator publishes an industry-wide AVM share.)

The non-lending demand

Away from lending, valuations are ordered for life events and compliance — and here AVMs are not accepted, because a court, the ATO or an auditor needs a qualified valuer’s report. These can be sized from the events that trigger them (the same primary indicators we track in our property valuation statistics):

None of these converts one-for-one into a valuation — not every death or divorce involves real property, and not every SMSF needs a fresh full report each year. But applying reasonable conversion rates gives a defensible bucket:

• Deceased estates — a large share of the 187,268 deaths involve an estate holding real property that needs a date-of-death valuation for probate and CGT cost base (deceased estate valuation): on the order of 80,000 a year.
• Family law — a portion of the 47,216 divorces (plus uncounted de facto separations) involve a contested property pool needing a Family Court valuation: roughly 25,000-35,000.
• SMSF — every fund holding real property needs a market value at each reporting date, though many use a desktop assessment or agent appraisal rather than a full report. The ATO publishes the dollars ($60.9bn residential, $116.7bn commercial) but not the number of funds holding property — with about 4% of funds using a limited-recourse loan as a floor, funds holding property run to well over 100,000, generating perhaps 60,000-100,000 valuer reports a year.
• Building and strata insurance — replacement-cost valuations across 367,970 strata schemes on a two-to-five-year cycle imply roughly 75,000-150,000 a year (replacement cost vs market value).
• CGT, pre-purchase, commercial fund revaluations, rental determinations and rural add a further 150,000-250,000 between them.

Non-lending demand therefore lands at roughly 400,000-600,000 valuer reports a year — and almost none of it is AVM.

Putting it together

The tiers reconcile against the workforce. Australia has about 5,000-5,200 practising valuers (API / Jobs and Skills Australia). A high-volume residential valuer can complete several hundred desktop and kerbside jobs a year while a commercial specialist does far fewer, so an average of roughly 250-320 reports per valuer produces 1.3-1.6 million valuer reports — which is exactly Tier 2. Two independent methods, the demand side and the supply side, landing in the same place is what gives us confidence in the order of magnitude.

One category sits outside all of this: statutory mass valuation. The NSW Valuer General alone re-values over 2.6 million land parcels a year for council rating and land tax, and every state does the same — but that is an automated mass-appraisal function, not the bespoke reports this estimate counts. Include it and the “valuation” count runs to well over ten million; we’ve kept it separate because it answers a different question. (For the difference between those statutory figures and market value, see capital improved value vs market value.)

The biggest uncertainty, stated plainly

The softest number in this estimate is the AVM share of lending, and it matters more than any other. The only quantified source is CoreLogic describing its own platform, where digital assessments passed half of all valuations in 2023 and were still climbing. If that share keeps rising, the number of human valuer reports can fall even while property transactions grow — the Tier 1 total holds up on transaction volume, but Tier 2 and Tier 3 quietly shrink. That is the structural story behind the numbers: the profession is doing proportionally fewer, higher-value reports as the routine, low-risk work is automated away.

Methodology

This is an estimate, not an official figure — because no official figure exists. The inputs are primary and dated: ABS Lending Indicators (loan commitments and refinancing), PEXA (settlements), ABS (deaths and divorces), the ATO SMSF report (property held), UNSW City Futures (strata schemes), API and Jobs and Skills Australia (valuer workforce), IBISWorld (market size), and CoreLogic/Cotality (platform volume and AVM/desktop mix). The conversion rates from a trigger event to a valuation, and the resulting tier totals, are Landmark’s own reasoning, shown above so they can be checked or challenged. Where a figure is annualised from a single quarter, or a count is not published (SMSF funds holding property), we have said so. Treat the tier totals as a considered order-of-magnitude, not a precise count.

Frequently asked questions

How many property valuations are done in Australia each year?

No agency publishes an official count. Our estimate, built from primary data on the events that trigger a valuation, is roughly 1.5 to 2.5 million property valuations and valuation-style assessments a year. Of those, about 1.3 to 1.6 million are reports produced by a qualified valuer, and roughly 0.5 to 0.8 million are full, inspected narrative reports — the rest being automated valuation models used in low-risk lending.

Why is there no official number of valuations?

Because no single body collects it. Lenders order valuations privately through platforms, and non-lending valuations are commissioned directly by owners, executors, lawyers and accountants. Industry research covers the revenue of the valuation sector and the number of valuers (around 5,000-5,200), but not the number of valuations performed.

What is the difference between an AVM and a valuer’s report?

An automated valuation model (AVM) is a value produced by an algorithm from sales and property data, with no human valuer and no inspection — lenders use them to clear low-risk loans instantly. A valuer’s report is signed by a qualified valuer and can be a desktop, kerbside or full-inspection assessment. Courts, the ATO and auditors require a valuer’s report, not an AVM.

What share of mortgage valuations are automated?

The only quantified source is CoreLogic (now Cotality) describing its own platform, where automated valuation models made up about 28% of valuations and desktop assessments a further 21% in 2023 — close to half digital, with some online lenders above 80%. This is a platform figure, not an industry-wide statistic, and no regulator publishes an official AVM share.

Does every property sale trigger a valuation?

No. A cash purchase may involve no formal valuation at all, while a financed purchase usually triggers a lender valuation — increasingly an AVM or desktop rather than a full inspection. Separately, buyers sometimes commission their own pre-purchase valuation, and events unrelated to a sale — probate, divorce, SMSF compliance, insurance — generate valuations without any transaction at all.

Sources

• ABS — Lending Indicators — new housing loan commitments and external refinancing
• PEXA — Property and Mortgage Insights — annual settlement volumes
• ABS — Deaths, Australia and Marriages and Divorces
• ATO — Self-managed super fund statistical report — property held in SMSFs
• Australian Property Institute and Jobs and Skills Australia — valuer workforce
• IBISWorld — Real Estate Valuation Services in Australia (market size, firm count)
• CoreLogic / Cotality — platform valuation volume and AVM/desktop mix (industry commentary, 2021 and 2023)

This article is general information and a good-faith estimate, not an official statistic. The tier totals are Landmark’s own reasoning from the primary inputs cited; the inputs are current as at their stated dates and the estimate will be revised as new data is released.

See also

• Australian Property Valuation Statistics 2026 — the fuller market dataset this estimate draws on
• What Is a Property Valuation? — the fundamentals behind every report
• Property Valuation Cost by State and Type — what these valuations cost
• How Apartments Are Valued in Australia and How Commercial Property Is Valued — the methods behind the reports
• Property Valuation for a Mortgage — how the lending valuations in this estimate actually work

Last verified: 22 July 2026. Input figures are current as at their cited releases (ABS, PEXA, ATO, API 2024-2026); the AVM/desktop mix is CoreLogic platform data from 2023. This article is reviewed as new data is published.