VA retired its eight regional appraisal fee schedules in May, and every one of them still opens on VA's own site — with a start date and no end date

Until 1 May 2026, what a lender could charge you for a VA appraisal was set by eight regional schedules, one for each of VA's regional loan centres. On that date all eight were replaced by a single national table, keyed by state and county. The regional layer stopped governing anything that day.

The eight are no longer shown on VA's fee page, but they have not left VA's site: each one still opens at its own address. Open any one of them and it says it took effect on 1 December 2021, and its file properties say it was approved for posting in October 2021. It gives no end date, and nothing in it says it has been replaced. The table that replaced them is the only fee schedule VA's page now links to.

That is not a filing quirk with no victim. A file five years old and a table published this spring do not agree everywhere, and where the retired file allows less than the table in force, a lender working from it — an old bookmark, a saved copy, a link that still resolves — authorises the lower figure, no appraiser on VA's panel takes the assignment at that number, and the order simply sits there until somebody works out why nobody has picked it up. The borrower's entire experience of this is that their appraisal is late and nobody can say when it's coming. Nothing about the number looked wrong to anyone, because it came off a document on VA's own site that still gives only the date it took effect.

What the table in force actually allows

Nationally, a single-family appraisal runs $650 to $1,500, a two-to-four-unit $750 to $1,800, and the turn time VA sets alongside the fee runs from 6 to 21 business days. Where you land inside those ranges is not a matter of shopping or negotiating. It is a cell in a table, and the key is your county.

Those two ranges are the whole of what I can print for every reader at once. The cell that applies to you is one line of a six-page table keyed by your state and your county, and the honest way to get it is to open the table, not to take a printed excerpt — mine included — as final.

Both ranges are from VA's Appraisal Fees and Timeliness Table, the national one effective 1 May 2026 — and VA adjusts these for market demand without issuing a new effective date, so check it live rather than take a printed copy as final.

The day count is not a promise about when the report reaches your lender's desk. It is the window VA allows the appraiser, and it starts on the first business day after the assignment goes out — not the day you applied, not the day you went under contract. Weekends and federal holidays don't count toward it.

What can be added, and what can't

Three charges that may never reach you

Some things legitimately move the number. A home that isn't built yet is $50 more. A re-inspection is $150, and only where the appraiser physically goes back out to the property. Mileage is billable only outside the area the appraiser was assigned to cover, at the government rate, and only where VA approved it beforehand. Cancel and it's up to $50 before the appointment is set, up to $175 once it's confirmed.

Three charges are different, because they may not be passed to the veteran at all. A rush or priority fee is one — the timeliness window is VA's, and it isn't for sale. A late fee is the second. The third is any appraisal a third party ordered: whoever ordered it owes for it. And the lender that first ordered your appraisal owes the appraiser even if your loan moves to another lender before it closes, which is the case people most often assume is theirs to absorb.

If one of those three turns up on a settlement statement with your name against it, the useful move isn't to argue about it. It's to ask the lender to show you where it's allowed. That is a fair question and it has a short answer.

The one that costs cash at the table

The funding fee can go into the loan. This one can't.

The regulation that lists what a VA borrower may be charged treats the two costs differently, and the difference only shows itself on closing day. The funding fee — the big percentage-based one — may be added to the loan amount and paid off across the life of the loan. The appraisal fee, on a purchase or a construction loan, may not. It is cash, at or before closing. If you have budgeted your VA closing costs on the assumption that the loan absorbs them, this is the line that doesn't. On a refinance it flips, and closing costs can go into the new loan amount.

The same regulation permits the charge without saying who has to bear it, which is why the appraisal fee is negotiable in a way most closing costs aren't. A seller can pay it. Very few buyers ask.

The other half of that pair — which funding fee row you're actually in, and why VA's own site still quotes a Guard and Reserve rate that stopped existing six years ago — is at /learn/va-funding-fee/.

Before you decide it covers you

An appraisal is not an inspection

VA's words, not mine, from its Home Loan Guaranty Buyer's Guide: "An appraisal is not a home inspection." The model Notice of Value letter in VA's Lenders Handbook says more: "The appraisal must not be considered a building inspection. Neither VA nor the lender can guarantee that the home will be satisfactory to you in all respects or that all equipment will operate properly." The first of those two sentences is the one people quote. The second is the one they drop.

The word inspection sitting inside it is most of the reason this gets misread. Someone comes to the house, walks it, and produces a document with a number on it, so the document starts to feel like a verdict on the house. It isn't one, and VA says so in as many words. Knowing what condition you are buying in is a separate professional, a separate fee, and not a line in VA's fee table.

If you're buying in Idaho

The appraisal fee is one line on a settlement statement, and I've done that state line by line

Everything above is national. What sits around this fee is not — filed escrow rates, recording fees, transfer taxes and who customarily pays what all change at the state line — and for one state I've put what each of those lines costs in Idaho, and who pays it on one page: the statement your appraisal fee is going to land on.

Send me the county, and we can look at the fee and the clock together

Tell me where the property is and what kind of property it is, and we can look up the fee VA allows there and the business days that go with it, and talk through whether anything about it is worth raising with your lender before the order goes out. No credit pull, no application, nothing to sign to start that conversation.

If your question is really about what the appraisal found rather than what it cost, bring that too. Your agent belongs in that conversation, and the options VA gives you when a value comes in low or the Notice of Value lists repairs are worth going through together before anyone decides what happens next.