Honesty and Integrity

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a certified appraiser have increased more than ever before. So it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can unquestionably be called a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

We have a great deal of obligations as appraisers but above everything we answer to our clients. Typically, for a standard residential appraisal, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers are required to only disclosing information to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you would like a copy of the appraisal document, you generally have to obtain it from your lender. Other responsibilities also include, accurate figures appropriate to the nature of the report, acquiring and keeping a respectable level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is standard operating procedure for us at That Appraisal Guy.

Appraisers will often be required to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is restricted to those parties who the appraiser knows, 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 backup their work files for a minimum of five years - at That Appraisal Guy you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

We meet or beat the industry standards and guidelines set in place for ethics. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. We never do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and get paid only if the loan closes. We can't do assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal industries biggest taboo, because it would tend to make appraisers up the value of homes or properties to increase their paycheck. We don't do that. Other unethical practices may be defined by state law or professional societies to which an appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also defines 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," "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 That Appraisal Guy, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, professional service.