![]() Honesty and Integrity: Blue Ridge Appraisal and ConsultingAppraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can unquestionably be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. As with any profession we are bound by an ethical code.
The appraiser's chief obligation is to their client.
More often than not, in residential practice, 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 via your lender instead of the appraiser.
Appraisers will sometimes need to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Normally the third parties are specifically defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is restricted to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the order.
There are also ethical standards 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 Blue Ridge Appraisal and Consulting makes a part of their standard routine. We meet or exceed the industry standards and guidelines set in place for ethics. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. Working on orders where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is not something we can consider. 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! This isn't how we operate. Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice explicitly states 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 follow these rules to the letter which means you can be assured we are doing everything we can to objectively determine the home or property value. With Blue Ridge Appraisal and Consulting, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, professional service. |