For honest and ethical appraisals, rely on APB AppraisalsAppraising is, by and large, a long term career. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever in the past. That's why it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can certainly be considered a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.
We have a lot of 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.
Subsequently, appraisers are privy to a lot of data, and like an attorney, can only discuss many of these matters with their client. As
a homeowner, if you desire to review an appraisal report, you normally should obtain it through your lender and not the appraiser.
Appraisers will regularly need to consider the interests of third parties, including homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Normally the third parties are explicitly defined in the appraisal report. 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 order.
Appraisers also have rules outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for at least five years - at APB Appraisals you can rest assured that we abide by that rule. APB Appraisals holds itself to the industry standards and mandates set in place for professional behavior. We refuse to accept anything less from ourselves. Working on assignments based on contingency fees is never an option. That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and get paid only if the loan closes. It should be obvious that fabricating a property's value to achieve essentially a higher fee is unethical! We set ourselves to a higher standard. Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice explicitly 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", or "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 doing everything we can to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value. With APB Appraisals, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, honest service. |