Property Appraisers and Assessors
What the pay figures show
- The District of Columbia pays this job the most, at $107,980. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $70,922 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- The District of Columbia leads for property appraisers and assessors at $107,980 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $70,922 in price-deflated terms. That robustness is the minority case: across the largest occupations, state income tax reorders the leader roughly a third of the time and price level does so more often still. Where the nominal leader survives both, the wage premium is large enough to absorb the state's own tax and price levels.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$67,960
People doing it
57,070
Highest paid
$107,980
DC
Best off, really
$70,922
DC, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$40,030
Highest tenth
$122,660
Lowest, really
$39,843
OR
States with data
50
National average
$75,770
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
110.8%
DC, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Geography does a lot of the work in this job. Pay roughly doubles between the lowest state and the highest. Tax and prices narrow that gap. They come nowhere near closing it — the real range is still $39,843 up to $70,922.
- Only 57,070 people do this job in the whole country. It is a small field, so the pay figures rest on fewer reports.
- This job is not published everywhere — 50 jurisdictions have a figure, with $67,960 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. The District of Columbia tops the ones that are.
- The nominal spread for property appraisers and assessors approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $39,843 to $70,922, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- National employment in property appraisers and assessors is 57,070. ⚠️ At this headcount the state-level medians rest on comparatively thin samples, and year-to-year movement in any one state reflects sampling as much as wages.
- 50 jurisdictions carry a published median for property appraisers and assessors. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Property Appraisers and Assessors
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $40,030 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $67,960 |
| Top tenth earn over | $122,660 |
| This salary | $67,960 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Property Appraisers and Assessors
The national median for this job
$67,960around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $40,030 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $67,960 |
| Top tenth | $122,660 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Property Appraisers and Assessors, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $44,940 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $107,980 |
| Spread | $63,040 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $65,840 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $67,754 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| DC | $107,980 | $78,584 | $70,922 |
| IA | $80,160 | $62,788 | $70,734 |
| NJ | $92,390 | $70,131 | $64,410 |
| MN | $83,400 | $63,354 | $64,373 |
| AK | $80,330 | $65,342 | $64,240 |
| MA | $91,750 | $69,109 | $63,849 |
| ME | $80,930 | $61,620 | $63,462 |
| CT | $86,050 | $65,383 | $63,057 |
| WA | $83,710 | $67,720 | $62,379 |
| ND | $65,210 | $54,564 | $61,604 |
| SD | $63,350 | $53,082 | $60,255 |
| CA | $88,900 | $67,195 | $59,686 |
| RI | $75,900 | $59,799 | $58,967 |
| WI | $68,660 | $54,511 | $58,553 |
| VA | $76,080 | $58,738 | $58,302 |
| CO | $75,150 | $59,100 | $58,294 |
| NH | $74,670 | $61,360 | $58,247 |
| LA | $62,910 | $51,227 | $57,985 |
| MD | $77,610 | $60,106 | $57,813 |
| NE | $64,770 | $51,979 | $57,514 |
| NC | $66,700 | $53,601 | $56,938 |
| OH | $63,410 | $52,103 | $56,749 |
| TX | $65,840 | $55,082 | $56,684 |
| TN | $62,350 | $52,278 | $56,508 |
| WY | $60,860 | $51,081 | $56,227 |
| NY | $78,060 | $60,127 | $55,867 |
| HI | $79,860 | $60,385 | $55,599 |
| MT | $62,250 | $50,029 | $55,437 |
| ID | $63,410 | $50,623 | $55,371 |
| MI | $64,270 | $51,340 | $54,511 |
| AL | $61,370 | $48,847 | $54,292 |
| FL | $65,620 | $54,906 | $53,074 |
| IN | $60,350 | $48,920 | $53,068 |
| KY | $58,850 | $47,524 | $52,531 |
| SC | $59,110 | $48,071 | $51,591 |
| GA | $62,460 | $49,849 | $51,550 |
| MO | $57,380 | $46,525 | $50,702 |
| MS | $54,530 | $43,906 | $50,297 |
| NV | $57,960 | $48,751 | $50,269 |
| IL | $60,150 | $47,678 | $48,230 |
| PA | $57,920 | $46,941 | $48,144 |
| AR | $50,840 | $41,607 | $48,097 |
| UT | $56,100 | $44,760 | $47,115 |
| DE | $57,610 | $45,839 | $46,184 |
| NM | $50,550 | $41,587 | $46,010 |
| OK | $49,990 | $40,598 | $45,985 |
| KS | $51,390 | $40,893 | $45,454 |
| AZ | $51,250 | $42,481 | $42,016 |
| WV | $44,940 | $37,059 | $41,281 |
| OR | $54,460 | $41,724 | $39,843 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $67,960, which means half of everyone doing this work earns less than that. Where you land depends on how long you have done it, who you do it for, and which city you do it in.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for this job, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is the District of Columbia, at $78,584.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for this job. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits Oregon, on $39,843.
- These are distribution medians for property appraisers and assessors, with a national value of $67,960. They describe a midpoint rather than an expected offer, and the within-occupation spread — visible in the tenth and ninetieth percentile figures — is wide enough that a state-level median is a weak predictor for any individual worker.
- Retained-pay figures for property appraisers and assessors model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $78,584, which leads in the District of Columbia.
- Real-terms results for property appraisers and assessors rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; Oregon anchors the distribution at $39,843. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.