Imagine, if you will, that each of the 50 US states is a separate country. Each has its own customs, currency, tax structure (income, sales, and import), and aviation regulations (including over-flight). Each has different forms of government and laws based on different legal systems (e.g. common law, Code Napoleon, monarchy). They each have their own language (some more than one), infrastructure, and economic systems (inclusive of banking, real property valuation and exchange, securities exchange, accounting, insurance procedures, and terminology). Each has some natural resources but none is selfsufficient. They must rely on each other and outside resources to maintain their standard of living. Some countries restrict or prohibit foreign ownership of real property or businesses. Some of the countries are ancient, like the UK, France, Sweden and Portugal, and some are more recent, as are Belgium and Italy. Some have exhibited political and economical stability over a long period, as have the UK, The Netherlands and Sweden, and some have seen radical changes, like Germany, Portugal and Spain. If you can put yourself in this setting, then you have some idea of what the international trader, investor, or appraiser of real property has faced in Europe.In earlier times, real property appraisers and the quality of their product generally matched the needs of the real estate market in which they worked [1]. Appraisers in traditionally international trading areas such as London and Amsterdam, became more sophisticated in their analysis, while those where the market was essentially internal continued with age old customs and procedures. In some countries, restrictions inhibited international investment in real estate; in others lack of economic control and market knowledge led to unbridled speculation. Overall, however, the system seemed to have been adequate until information became more accessible and cross-border trading became freer.The real property market boom of the 1980s and subsequent crashes in the 1990s were a wake-up call for the European Union (EU)[2] real estate professionals. In many cases the real property appraisers were blamed,