 Honesty and Integrity: First Choice Appraisal Services, Inc.Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can definitely be considered a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by an ethical code.
We have many obligations as appraisers, but our primary duty is to our clients.
Typically, for a standard 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 brought in to maintain independence.
Subsequently, 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 to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you generally have to request it via your lender and not the appraiser.
Appraisers will often be obligated to consider the interests of third parties, including homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are spelled out in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is limited to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the job.
There are also ethical standards that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for a minimum of five years - at First Choice Appraisal Services, Inc. you can rest assured that we stick to that rule. When creating reports, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. Accepting assignments based on contingency fees is never an option. That is, we don't agree to do an appraisal report and base our pay upon coming up with a particular value conclusion. There's certainly a conflict of interest if an appraiser can report a larger value with the reward of getting paid more money! We set ourselves to a higher standard. Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice explicitly describes unethical behavior 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" as well as other situations. We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be assured we are working hard to objectively determine the home or property value. As soon as you engage First Choice Appraisal Services, Inc., we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the honesty and integrity we're known for. |
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