Honesty and Integrity: KH Appraising

By and large, appraising a long term career. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be dubbed a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.

The appraiser's primary responsibility is to his or her client. Normally, in residential practice, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers are required to only disclosing information to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you require to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you normally have to request it from your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, reaching and maintaining an adequate level of competency and education, and the appraiser must conduct him or herself as a professional. Maintaining high ethics is is what we do everyday at KH Appraising.

In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Generally the third parties are specifically defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is only 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 with whom we share information For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for at least five years - at KH Appraising you can rest assured that we stick to that rule.

We demand the highest professional integrity possible from ourselves. We never do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we are not able to 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 industries biggest no-no, because it would invite appraisal fraud since raising the estimate of the home would inflate the their paycheck. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other improper practices may be established by state law or professional organizations that the appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also states a violation in ethics as accepting 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 rest easy knowing we are working hard to objectively determine the home or property value.

When you order an appraisal from KH Appraising we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the ethical handling of appraisals that we're known for.