Honesty and Integrity: North American Appraisals

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. So it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can definitely be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by an ethical code.

We have a lot of responsibilities as appraisers but first and foremost we answer to our clients. Typically, for a normal residential appraisal, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers are privy to a lot of data, and like an attorney can only discuss many matters with their client. As a homeowner, if you require to review an appraisal report, you should get it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, acquiring and keeping a certain level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is is what we do everyday at North American Appraisals.

Appraisers will sometimes be required to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility 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 rules outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for at least five years - at North American Appraisals you can rest assured that we stick 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 get paid only if the loan closes. We can't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal industries most important rule, because it would tend to make appraisers raise the value of homes or properties to increase their paycheck. 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 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," "the amount of a value opinion," as well as other situations. We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can rest easy knowing we are going above and beyond to objectively determine the home or property value.

With North American Appraisals, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, professional service.