For honest and ethical appraisals, rely on Forever Home Appraisal

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. That's why it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can definitely be dubbed a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

The appraiser's chief obligation is to their client. Typically, in residential practice, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers have rules and regulations they must follow, including confidentiality for their clients a homeowner, if you desire to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you generally have to get it from your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment's nature, reaching and keeping an appropriate level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is is what we do everyday at Forever Home Appraisal.

In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Generally the third parties are explicitly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary roll is limited to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the job.

Appraisers also have rules outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must store their work files for at least five years - at Forever Home Appraisal you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

When working on an order, we follow the highest ethical standards possible. We never do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and get paid only if the loan closes. We don't do assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal professions biggest no-no, because it would tend to make appraisers increase the value of homes or properties to increase their fee. We don't do that. Other unethical practices may be established by state law or professional organizations that the appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also defines 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," "the amount of a value opinion," as well as other situations. We follow these rules to the letter which means you can rest easy knowing we are doing everything we can to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Forever Home Appraisal, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, professional service.