Willamette Valley Appraisal Professionals maintains the utmost professional ethicsWe consider our business as a profession. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever in the past. So it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can certainly be dubbed a profession as opposed to a trade. As with any profession we are bound by ethical considerations.We have quite a few obligations as appraisers, but first and foremost we answer to our clients. Most of the time, 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 typically restricted to only disclosing information to their clients, so as a homeowner, if you desire to review the appraisal document, you generally have to request it through your lender.
In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Generally the third parties are explicitly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is only to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the order.
Appraisers also have rules outside of boundaries of with whom we share information For example, appraisers must keep their work files for a minimum of five years - at Willamette Valley Appraisal Professionals you can rest assured that we abide by that rule. We demand the highest ethical standards possible from ourselves. Accepting orders based on contingency fees is never an option. That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. There's certainly a conflict of interest if an appraiser can report an unsubstantiated value and then get paid more money! We just don't do it. Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") clearly 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" in addition to other situations We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be at ease knowing we are working hard to objectively determine the home or property value. With Willamette Valley Appraisal Professionals, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, honest service. |
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