 Honesty and Integrity: Metro AppraisalsAppraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be called a profession rather than a trade. As with any profession we are bound by ethical considerations.
We have a lot of obligations as appraisers, but above everything we answer to our clients.
Generally, for a normal residential appraisal, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client.
It follows that 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 an appraisal report, you normally have to get it via your lender instead of the appraiser.
Appraisers will sometimes need to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are spelled out in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is restricted to those third parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the assignment.
Appraisers also have duties outside of boundaries of with whom we share information For example, appraisers must keep their work files for a minimum of five years - something else Metro Appraisals takes very seriously. We require the highest professional integrity possible from ourselves. Working on orders where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is never an option. That is, we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect the fee only if the loan closes. There's a definite conflict of interest if an appraiser can report an unsubstantiated value and then get paid more money! We set ourselves to a higher standard. Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") explicitly describes a violation in ethics 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 rest easy knowing we are doing everything we can to objectively determine the home or property value. With Metro Appraisals, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, professional service. |
|||||||||
