 Honesty and Integrity: A.T. Home AppraisalsAppraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever in the past. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can unquestionably be considered a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by ethical considerations.
We have a great deal of obligations as appraisers, but first and foremost we answer to our clients.
Typically, for a normal residential appraisal, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal, and often the appraisal is ordered by a third party the lender has retained to maintain independence.
Appraisers have certain duties of confidentiality to their clients, plus many rules and regulations controlling with whom we share information. As
a homeowner, if you would like to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you normally have to obtain it from your lender instead of the appraiser.
In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary role is limited to those parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the job.
There are also ethical rules that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for at least five years - something else A.T. Home Appraisals diligently adheres to. We require the highest ethical standards possible from ourselves. Working on assignments where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is never an option. That means we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. Anyone should be able to see that fabricating a property's value to achieve essentially a bigger fee is unethical! We just don't do it. 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" in addition to other situations We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can rest easy knowing we are working hard to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value. When you engage A.T. Home Appraisals, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the business principles we're known for. |
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