 Honesty and Integrity: Owens Appraisal Service LLCAppraising is, by and large, a long term career. 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 certainly be dubbed a profession rather than a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we must follow strict ethical considerations.
We have a great deal of responsibilities as appraisers, but first and foremost we answer to our clients.
Typically, for a regular residential appraisal, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client.
Consequently, appraisers are typically limited to only disclosing their findings to their clients, so as
a homeowner, if you want a copy of the appraisal document, you generally have to obtain it via your lender.
Appraisers can also have fiduciary obligations to third parties, including homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Normally the third parties are specifically defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is restricted to those parties who the appraiser is aware of, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the order.
There are also ethical standards 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 Owens Appraisal Service LLC you can rest assured that we stick to that rule. We meet or exceed the industry standards and guidelines set in place for ethics. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. Accepting assignments where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is never an option. In other words, we don't agree to do an appraisal report and base our pay upon coming up with a particular value conclusion. There's an obvious conflict of interest if an appraiser can report an unsubstantiated value and then get paid more money! We set ourselves to a higher standard. Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice explicitly 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 diligently 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. As soon as you request an appraisal from Owens Appraisal Service LLC, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you deserve along with the high ethical standards we're known for. |
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