The graduate shortage: who will value Britain’s homes in 2030?
According to RICS, the average qualified surveyor is in their mid-fifties. Couple this with new entrant numbers failing to keep pace with retirements, and the profession faces a critical skills gap at the worst possible time. Ryan Mathews, Managing Director of LRG’s Surveyors division, examines why surveying struggles to attract new talent and what needs to change.
Building surveying and valuation are among the disciplines most acutely affected. The RICS Surveying Skills Report, published in October 2025, found that two-thirds of respondents cite an ageing workforce and high retirement rates as the primary cause, with new entrants simply not arriving fast enough to replace those leaving.
This isn’t a distant problem. The average age of a surveyor in the UK has been widely reported at 55, and the demographics of most valuation firms reflect that statistic. The experienced professionals who built their careers through the housing booms and busts of the past four decades are approaching retirement, and the question now facing our sector is who will value Britain’s homes in 2030?
The career no one tells you about
The pipeline problem begins with early awareness. Unlike fields such as law, medicine or accountancy, surveying rarely features in careers advice. School leavers and graduates simply don’t know what surveyors do, let alone that the profession offers genuine career progression and competitive salaries at mid-career levels. RICS has acknowledged this perception gap via engagement with policymakers and STEM programmes for schools, and is working to address it. However, the sector has spent decades failing to market itself while other professions have been actively recruiting the brightest graduates.
Then there’s the qualification pathway itself. RICS introduced the AssocRICS qualification in 2009, partly to help address skills shortages by creating a more accessible entry point to the profession. However, the route to full chartered status remains demanding. For graduates with a RICS-accredited degree, the Assessment of Professional Competence (APC) requires at least 24 months of structured training and a minimum of 96 hours of continuing professional development (CPD). For those with relevant experience, the pathway varies, but the combination of day-job pressures, exam preparation and the cost-of-living squeeze may mean many young professionals struggle to see the journey through.
RICS has recognised this. Recent updates to the assessment framework, including a new resit policy – designed to ensure candidates are well prepared with clearer expectations – and a more structured approach to recording CPD, suggest the body is listening to feedback about complexity and clarity. While these are positive steps, they don’t solve the fundamental challenge of getting people through the door in the first place.
The cost of entry
Cost is a factor at every stage, and for all parties. For employers, taking on graduates means absorbing salary costs for staff who won’t be fee-earning for some time, while also pulling experienced surveyors away from billable work to provide training and supervision. In the current climate, with employer National Insurance increases and wage pressures squeezing margins, many firms are prioritising immediate workflow over long-term investment in training. The business case for graduate schemes is sound over a five- or 10-year horizon, but when overheads are rising and clients expect competitive fees, short-term thinking often wins.
For those considering the profession, the equation is equally challenging. The RICS Surveying Skills Report found that roughly half of members aged 17-34 cited lower starting salaries compared to other STEM fields as a barrier to attracting talent. It’s an industry-wide challenge – when you’re facing today’s high living costs, a three-to-five-year qualification pathway with modest initial earnings is a hard sell against sectors offering quicker returns.
Is AI a threat or an opportunity?
And then there’s the question of AI. It would be easy to assume that graduates are avoiding surveying because they believe technology will eliminate the need for it. Yet the evidence suggests the opposite. The same RICS report found that 67% of respondents believe AI will help surveyors deliver greater value to clients, while only 9% of younger professionals expressed strong concern about its impact on their careers. We’re a profession that’s embracing technology, not fearing it.
Moving forward, AI and Automated Valuation Models (AVMs) will reshape what surveyors do. Lenders are increasingly using AVMs for lower-risk, straightforward valuations, and this trend will accelerate. The work that remains – and grows – will be the complex, specialist instructions that technology cannot handle – for example, development appraisals, gross development values, properties with unusual characteristics, and the professional judgment calls that clients pay for because they require human expertise. If we fail to train the next generation, we risk finding ourselves with a workforce skilled in work that’s being automated, and a shortage of professionals capable of delivering the higher-value services that will shape the future of the sector.
RICS published its first global professional standard for the responsible use of AI in surveying practice in September 2025, now in force. The standard acknowledges that technology will be integral to the profession’s future while insisting that surveyors remain accountable for the work that carries their name. It’s the right approach – embrace innovation, maintain standards, keep humans in the loop – but it also underlines the need for a workforce that can work with these tools.
Reform without the workforce
The government’s proposed Home Buying and Selling Reform adds another layer of urgency. The consultation closed in December 2025, and the government’s roadmap for reform is expected in the coming months. The consultation proposed that sellers work with conveyancers and surveyors to carry out searches and a property condition assessment prior to listing, meaning upfront condition reporting could become a standard requirement in transactions. If these reforms proceed, the implications for surveying are significant. Around 1.2 million residential property transactions are completed in the UK each year, and the current process takes an average of 120 days, with roughly one in three transactions failing. The government’s ambition is to cut four weeks from that timeline and halve the failure rate.
These are the right goals; however, has anyone asked who will conduct these additional inspections? If mandatory upfront property condition assessments become a reality, the sector will need to scale capacity rapidly, and there’s no obvious mechanism to do so. Without serious attention to workforce planning, reforms designed to speed up the homebuying process could have the opposite effect, creating bottlenecks and delays as demand outstrips supply.
Now is the time to act
The solutions include better promotion of surveying as a career – starting in schools – clearer and more supportive qualification pathways, and financial incentives for firms that invest in training. Above all, recognition that this is a collective challenge requiring coordinated action from government, RICS and the sector itself.
The alternative is a profession that slowly hollows out, losing institutional knowledge as experienced practitioners retire and failing to build the capacity the housing market needs. With 1.5 million new homes to deliver this Parliament and potential reforms that could transform how property transactions work, the stakes could hardly be higher. This problem has been building for years. The time to act is now.
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