 For honest and ethical appraisals, count on Appraise ItWe consider what we do as a profession. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by ethical considerations.
An appraiser's main responsibility is to their client.
Most of the time, in residential practice, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client.
Thereon, appraisers have certain duties of confidentiality to their clients, plus strict rules and regulations to which we must adhere. As
a homeowner, if you desire to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you generally should obtain it via your lender instead of the appraiser.
In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are listed in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is restricted to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the job.
There are also ethical duties that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for a minimum of five years - at Appraise It you can rest assured that we stick to that rule. When creating reports, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. Accepting orders where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is never an option. In other words, we don't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. It should be apparent to anyone that inflating a value to achieve essentially a higher fee is unethical! This isn't how we operate. Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice clearly states a violation in ethics as accepting of an assignment that is contingent on "the reporting of a pre-determined result (e.g., opinion of value)", "a direction in assignment results that favors the cause of the client", or "the amount of a value opinion" as well as other situations. We follow these rules to the letter which means you can rest easy knowing we are doing everything we can to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value. With Appraise It, you won't have any doubts that you're receiving 100 percent ethical, professional service. |
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