 Streamline Appraisals Inc. upholds the highest professional ethicsAppraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever in the past. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. As with any profession we must follow strict ethical considerations.
We have quite a few responsibilities as appraisers, but first and foremost we answer to our clients.
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.
It follows that 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 desire a copy of the appraisal document, you generally have to get it through your lender instead of the appraiser.
Appraisers can also have fiduciary obligations to third parties, such as homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Those third parties normally are listed in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary role is restricted to those third 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 rules that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for a minimum of five years - something else Streamline Appraisals Inc. diligently adheres to. We require the highest ethical standards possible from ourselves. Doing orders where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is never an option. That means we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. It should be apparent to anyone that fabricating a home's value to achieve essentially a bigger paycheck is unethical! We set ourselves to a higher standard. Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") explicitly defines 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" in addition to other situations We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can rest easy knowing we are going above and beyond to get you an accurate home or property value. With Streamline Appraisals Inc., you won't have any doubts that you're receiving 100 percent ethical, professional service. |
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