 Honesty and Integrity: Weatherby Appraisal Services, LLCAppraising 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 in this day and age that real estate appraisal can definitely 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 great deal of obligations as appraisers, but our chief duty is to our clients.
Most of the time, in residential practice, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client.
Subsequently, appraisers have certain duties of confidentiality to their clients, plus strict rules and regulations to which we must adhere. So, as
a homeowner, if you want to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you normally have to request it through your lender instead of the appraiser.
In some cases appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, both sellers and buyers, or others. Typically the third parties are specifically defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary role is only to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the order.
There are also ethical duties that have nothing to do with whom we share information. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for a minimum of five years - something else Weatherby Appraisal Services, LLC takes very seriously. We require the highest ethical standards possible from ourselves. Accepting 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 fabricating a home's value to achieve a bigger paycheck is unethical! We just don't do it. Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice also states 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", 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 objectively determine the home or property value. With Weatherby Appraisal Services, LLC, you won't have any doubts that you're getting 100 percent ethical, honest service. |
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