Honesty and Integrity: All Brevard Certified Appraisals

Appraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever in the past. That's why it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can certainly be considered a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by an ethical code.

An appraiser's chief responsibility is to his or her client. Typically, for a regular residential appraisal, the lender places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client. Appraisers have certain duties of confidentiality to their clients, and as a homeowner, if you would like to obtain a copy of the appraisal document, you should request it from your lender. Other responsibilities also include, numerical accuracy depending on the scope of the assignment, acquiring and sustaining a certain level of competency and education, and of course, the appraiser must behave in a professional manner. Maintaining high ethics and client confidentiality is is what we do everyday at All Brevard Certified Appraisals.

Appraisers will regularly be obligated to consider the interests of third parties, such as homeowners, sellers and buyers, or others. Those third parties normally are listed in the appraisal assignment itself. An appraiser's fiduciary responsibility 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 rules outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must backup their work files for at least five years - at All Brevard Certified Appraisals you can rest assured that we abide by that rule.

We meet or beat the industry standards and mandates set in place for ethics. We refuse to accept anything less from ourselves. We have a responsibility not to do assignments on contingency fees. That is, we can't agree to do an appraisal report and collect the fee only if the loan closes. We don't do assignments on percentage fees. That is probably the appraisal industries biggest taboo, because it would tend to make appraisers increase the value of homes or properties to increase their paycheck. We don't do that. Other unethical practices may be established by state law or professional societies to which an appraiser belongs.

The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) also defines 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," "the amount of a value opinion," as well as other situations. We follow these rules to the letter which means you can rest easy knowing we are doing everything we can to objectively determine the home or property value.

As soon as you request an appraisal from All Brevard Certified Appraisals we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the an ethical approach with appraisals that we're known for.