 Seaway Appraisals maintains the utmost professional ethicsAppraising 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 considered a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.
The appraiser's chief responsibility is to their client.
Typically, in residential practice, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal, and often the appraisal is ordered by a third party the lender has contracted in order to maintain independence.
It's important to know that many matters relating to an assignment are to be discussed exclusively with the appraiser's client. As
a homeowner, if you desire to review an appraisal report, you generally should get it via your lender.
In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are listed in scope of the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary role is limited to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the job.
There are also ethical duties 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 Seaway Appraisals takes very seriously. We only perform to the highest ethical standards possible. Accepting orders based on contingency fees is never an option. In other words, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and base our pay upon coming up with a particular value conclusion. There's a definite conflict of interest if an appraiser can report a larger value and then get paid more money! 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 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 Seaway Appraisals, you won't have any doubts that you're receiving 100 percent ethical, professional service. |
|||||||||
