 Honesty and Integrity: Pacific Property AppraisalsAppraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be called a profession as opposed to a trade. As with any profession we must follow strict ethical considerations.
An appraiser's main obligation is to their client.
Normally, 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 retained to maintain independence.
Consequently, appraisers are typically restricted to only disclosing information to their clients, so as
a homeowner, if you want to review an appraisal report, you normally should get it via your lender and not the appraiser.
In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are spelled out in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary role is only to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the assignment.
There are also ethical standards that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for at least five years - at Pacific Property Appraisals you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule. We demand the highest professional integrity possible from ourselves. Working on assignments where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is not something we can consider. That means we don't agree to do an appraisal report and get paid only if the loan closes. Anyone should be able to see that fabricating a home's value to achieve what amounts to a higher fee is unethical! We set ourselves to a higher standard. Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") clearly defines 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", or "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 going above and beyond to get you an accurate home or property value. As soon as you engage Pacific Property Appraisals, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you deserve along with the high ethical standards we're known for. |
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