Honesty and Integrity: Center Valley Appraisals

By and large, appraising a long term career. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be considered a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by ethical considerations.

As appraisers our primary obligation is to his or her client. Generally, in residential practice, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers have rules and regulations they must follow, including confidentiality for their clients a homeowner, if you require to review an appraisal report, you should obtain it through your lender. Other obligations also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment's nature, reaching and sustaining a certain level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is standard operating procedure for us at Center Valley Appraisals.

In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Typically the third parties are specifically defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary roll is restricted to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the job.

Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of with whom we share information For example, appraisers must store their work files for at least five years - at Center Valley Appraisals you can rest assured that we stick to that rule.

We meet or beat the industry standards and rules set in place for ethics. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. Working on assignments that contingency fees is not something we can consider That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and get paid only if the loan closes. Another practice that's restricted is doing assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal industries biggest taboo, because it would invite fraudulent practices since increasing the value of the home would raise the fee. We don't do that. Other improper practices may be established by state law or professional organizations 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," in addition to other situations We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be assured we are going above and beyond to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

As soon as you order an appraisal from Center Valley Appraisals we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the ethical handling of appraisals that we're known for.