Honesty and Integrity: Bill Brown Appraisals

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can unquestionably be considered a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.

For an appraiser the primary responsibility is to his or her client. Normally, for a standard residential appraisal, the appraiser's client is the lender ordering the appraisal. Appraisers have rules and regulations they must follow, including confidentiality for their clients a homeowner, if you would like to obtain a copy of an appraisal report, you generally have to obtain it from your lender. Other responsibilities also include, accurate sums appropriate to the nature of the assignment, attaining and keeping a respectable level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Here at Bill Brown Appraisals, we take these ethical responsibilities very seriously.

Appraisers will sometimes need to consider the interests of third parties, including homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Normally the third parties are clearly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary roll is restricted to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the assignment.

There are also ethical rules that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for at least five years - at Bill Brown Appraisals you can rest assured that we adhere to that rule.

We meet or beat the industry standards and rules set in place for ethics. We won't accept anything less from ourselves. 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 probably the appraisal professions biggest no-no, because it would tend to make appraisers up the value of homes or properties to increase their fee. We set ourselves to a higher standard. Other unethical practices may be established by state law or professional societies that the appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also states unethical behavior 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 diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can be assured we are doing everything we can to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Bill Brown Appraisals, you won't have any doubts that you're receiving 100 percent ethical, honest service.