Honesty and Integrity: Preferred Appraisal Service

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed or certified appraiser have increased more than ever before. So, it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can unquestionably be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

We have a lot of obligations as appraisers but our chief duty is to our clients. Generally, in residential practice, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Certain matters pertaining to an assignment can only be discussed with an appraiser's client. As a a homeowner, if you require a copy of an appraisal report, you normally have to request it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, accurate sums appropriate to the scope of the assignment, acquiring and keeping an appropriate level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics is is what we do everyday at Preferred Appraisal Service.

Appraisers will frequently need to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are spelled out in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is only to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the order.

There are also ethical standards that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must store their work files for a minimum of five years - at Preferred Appraisal Service you can be rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

Preferred Appraisal Service holds itself to the industry standards and guidelines set in place for ethics. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. Doing assignments on contingency fees is not something we can consider, that is, we don't agree to do an appraisal report and get paid only if the loan closes. We don't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal professions biggest no-no, because it would tend to make appraisers raise the value of homes or properties to increase their fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unprofessional practices may be defined by state law or professional organizations to which an appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also states unethical behavior 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," in addition to other situations. We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be at ease knowing we are doing everything we can to objectively determine the property value.

When you engage Preferred Appraisal Service, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the ethical handling of appraisals that we're known for.