A trend reported by the U.S. Census Bureau highlights the growing importance of appraisal management companies.

According to a recently issued report by the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of real estate appraisal firms with no paid employees grew by 19.1% from 2002 to 2003. During the same period, the issued report said, the overall number of non-employer firms increased by 5.5%.

"The statistics from the recent Census study support research that the trend in the U.S. is toward small businesses with no employees," said Bill Godden, director of research for the Appraisal Institute. "Compared to the UK, where appraisal firms are larger, the U.S. appraiser market is mostly comprised of self-employed appraisers, which our own data confirms."

This indicates to the mortgage lenders that it is increasingly more difficult for them to find out-of-town appraisers. This comes at a time when there are more and more lenders issuing loans to borrowers who live a long distance from these companies.

Self-employed appraisers are less likely to promote themselves and often are not even listed in the yellow pages of the local telephone books. Instead they tend to affiliate themselves with appraisal management companies.

Therefore, lenders, just like self-employed appraisers, are finding appraisal management companies to be more important to their livelihood than they were in the past.