 Accredited Appraisers, Inc. upholds the utmost professional ethicsWe consider what we do as a profession. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever in the past. That's why 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 have a strict ethical code.
An appraiser's chief responsibility is to their client.
Normally, in residential practice, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal, and often the appraisal is ordered by a third party the lender has hired in order to maintain independence.
Appraisers are privy to a lot of data, and like an attorney, can only discuss many of these matters with their client. As
a homeowner, if you desire a copy of an appraisal report, you generally have to request it via your lender instead of the appraiser.
In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is only to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the order.
Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for a minimum of five years - something else Accredited Appraisers, Inc. takes very seriously. Accredited Appraisers, Inc. holds itself to the industry standards and rules set in place for ethics. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. Accepting assignments based on contingency fees is never an option. That is, we don't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. Anyone should be able to see that inflating a value to achieve what amounts to a bigger fee is unethical! We just don't do it. Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") clearly 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", or "the amount of a value opinion" in addition to other situations We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be assured we are working hard to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value. With Accredited Appraisers, Inc., you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, professional service. |
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