 For honest and ethical appraisals, trust Appraisers of America, Inc.Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be called a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.
We have a great deal of responsibilities as appraisers, but first and foremost we answer to our clients.
Typically, in residential practice, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client.
Subsequently, appraisers are typically limited to only disclosing their findings to their clients, so as
a homeowner, if you desire a copy of the appraisal document, you normally should request it via your lender instead of the appraiser.
Appraisers will often be required to consider the interests of third parties, including homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Typically the third parties are explicitly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is restricted to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the job.
There are also ethical rules that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for at least five years - at Appraisers of America, Inc. you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule. Appraisers of America, Inc. holds itself to the industry standards and mandates set in place for ethics. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. Working on orders where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is not something we can consider. That is, we don't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. There's an obvious conflict of interest if an appraiser can report a greater value with the reward of getting paid more money! Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") explicitly defines a violation in ethics as the acceptance 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 going above and beyond to objectively determine the home or property value. With Appraisers of America, Inc., you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, honest service. |
|||||||||
