Accuracy Matters Appraisals upholds the highest professional ethics

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become 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 called a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

We have quite a few obligations as appraisers but our chief duty is to our clients. Typically, in residential practice, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers have certain duties of privacy to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you require a copy of an appraisal report, you should get it from your lender. Other responsibilities also include, accurate calculations appropriate to the nature of the assignment, attaining and keeping a respectable level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is standard operating procedure for us at Accuracy Matters Appraisals.

Appraisers will sometimes be obligated to consider the interests of third parties, including homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are defined in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility is limited to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the assignment.

Appraisers also have standards outside of boundaries of with whom we share information For example, appraisers must store their work files for a minimum of five years - at Accuracy Matters Appraisals you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

We meet or beat the industry standards and mandates set in place for ethics. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. Doing orders on contingency fees is never an option. That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. Another practice that's restricted is doing assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal industries most important rule, because it would tend to make appraisers up the value of homes or properties to increase their paycheck. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical practices may be established by state law or professional organizations to which an appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also defines 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," "the amount of a value opinion," as well as other situations. We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are going above and beyond to provide an unbiased determination of the home or property value.

With Accuracy Matters Appraisals, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, professional service.