Honesty and Integrity: CERTIFIED APPRAISAL SERVICES

By and large, appraising a long term career. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be dubbed a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.

For an appraiser the main responsibility is to his or her client. Most of the time, for a standard residential appraisal, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers are privy to a lot of data, and like an attorney can only discuss many matters with their client. As a homeowner, if you require to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you generally have to get it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, attaining and keeping a certain level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is just normal course of business for us at CERTIFIED APPRAISAL SERVICES.

In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are listed in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is limited to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the assignment.

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 - something else CERTIFIED APPRAISAL SERVICES diligently adheres to.

CERTIFIED APPRAISAL SERVICES holds itself to the industry standards and guidelines set in place for ethics. We refuse to accept anything less from ourselves. We never do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we are not able to 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 most important rule, because it would tend to make appraisers up the value of homes or properties to increase their fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other improper practices may be established by state law or professional societies that the appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also defines 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," "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 doing everything we can to objectively determine the home or property value.

With CERTIFIED APPRAISAL SERVICES, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, honest service.