Hometown Appraisal maintains the utmost professional ethics

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 dubbed a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.

We have quite a few obligations as appraisers but our primary duty is to our clients. Generally, for a regular residential appraisal, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Certain matters pertaining to an assignment can only be discussed with an appraiser's client. As a a homeowner, if you desire to review an appraisal report, you should request it through your lender. Other obligations also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, reaching and sustaining a respectable level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Here at Hometown Appraisal, we take these ethical responsibilities very seriously.

Appraisers will regularly be required to consider the interests of third parties, including homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Generally the third parties are specifically defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is restricted to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the assignment.

Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for at least five years - at Hometown Appraisal you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

When creating reports, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. Doing assignments on contingency fees is not something we can consider That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. We don't do assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal industries most important rule, because it would invite appraisal fraud since raising the value of the home would increase the fee. We don't do that. Other unethical practices may be established by state law or professional societies 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," as well as other situations. We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be assured we are doing everything we can to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With Hometown Appraisal, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, honest service.