![]() For honest and ethical appraisals, rely on Seither & Associates Appraisal GroupAppraising is typically a long term career. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can unquestionably be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by an ethical code.
An appraiser's primary obligation 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 retained to maintain independence.
Thereon, appraisers are privy to a lot of information, and like an attorney, can only discuss many of these matters with their client. As
a homeowner, if you want to review the appraisal document, you normally should obtain it from your lender instead of the appraiser.
In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Generally the third parties are explicitly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is restricted to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the order.
Appraisers also have standards 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 Seither & Associates Appraisal Group makes a part of their standard routine. We meet or exceed the industry standards and guidelines set in place for professional behavior. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. Working on orders where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion 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. Anyone should be able to see that inflating a value to achieve what amounts to a bigger fee is unethical! This isn't how we operate. Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice explicitly describes a violation in ethics 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", 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 confident we are doing everything we can to get you an accurate home or property value. With Seither & Associates Appraisal Group, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, honest service. |