Honesty and Integrity: Tye Appraisals

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. So it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can certainly be dubbed a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by ethical considerations.

For an appraiser the primary responsibility is to their client. Typically, for a regular residential appraisal, 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 review the appraisal document, you normally have to get it through your lender. Other obligations also include, numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, reaching and sustaining an appropriate 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 Tye Appraisals.

Appraisers will often need to consider the interests of third parties, including homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Normally 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 written parameters of the order.

Appraisers also have duties outside of boundaries of with whom we share information For example, appraisers must store their work files for a minimum of five years - something else Tye Appraisals takes very seriously.

We demand the highest professional integrity possible from ourselves. We never 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. Another practice that's restricted is doing assignments on percentage fees. That is perhaps the appraisal professions most important rule, because it would invite fraudulent practices since increasing the estimate of the home would inflate the their paycheck. We don't do that. Other unethical practices may be defined 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 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 be assured we are going above and beyond to objectively determine the home or property value.

With Tye Appraisals, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, honest service.