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 Honesty and Integrity: LRS & Associates
Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever in the past. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can unquestionably be called a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we have a strict ethical code.
We have a lot of responsibilities as appraisers, but first and foremost we answer to our clients.
Typically, for a normal residential appraisal, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client.
Consequently, appraisers have certain duties of confidentiality to their clients, plus strict rules and regulations controlling with whom we share information. So, as
a homeowner, if you would like to review the appraisal document, you generally should obtain it via your lender instead of the appraiser.
Other responsibilities include numerical accuracy depending on the assignment parameters, acquiring and sustaining a respectable level of competency and education, and naturally, the appraiser must bear a professional demeanor. Maintaining high ethics is just normal course of business for us at LRS & Associates.
There are some scenarios in which appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are spelled out in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary role is limited to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the assignment.
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LRS & Associates has an established track record for completing competent and ethically superior appraisals. To learn more, contact us. |
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There are also ethical duties that have nothing to do with clients and others. For example, appraisers must be able to produce their work files for a minimum of five years - at LRS & Associates you can rest assured that we stick to that rule.
LRS & Associates holds itself to the industry standards and guidelines set in place for ethics. We won't accept anything less from ourselves.
Doing assignments based on contingency fees is not something we can consider.
In other words, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing.
It should be apparent to anyone that inflating a value to achieve what amounts to a higher fee is unethical!
This isn't how we operate.
Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice clearly states 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", or "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 doing everything we can to get you an accurate home or property value.
With LRS & Associates, you can be assured of 100 percent ethical, professional service.
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