AA Appraisals upholds the utmost professional ethics

We consider our our job a profession. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be considered a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.

We have quite a few obligations as appraisers but first and foremost we answer to our clients. Typically, in residential practice, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers have certain duties of confidentiality to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you require to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you should get it through your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, acquiring and maintaining a certain level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is just normal course of business for us at AA Appraisals.

In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Normally the third parties are explicitly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is restricted to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters 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 at least five years - at AA 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 won't accept anything less from ourselves. We don't do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we don't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. We can't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal professions most important rule, because it would tend to make appraisers inflate the value of homes or properties to increase their fee. We don't do that. Other unprofessional 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 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," in addition to other situations We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be confident we are going above and beyond to objectively determine the home or property value.

When you engage AA Appraisals we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the an ethical approach with appraisals that we're known for.