 Honesty and Integrity: Hancock AppraisalsAppraising is generally a long term career. The rigors of becoming a licensed appraiser have increased more than ever before. So it goes without question these days that real estate appraisal can unquestionably be dubbed a profession as opposed to a trade. As with any profession we must follow strict ethical considerations.
An appraiser's chief responsibility is to their client.
Generally, for a normal residential appraisal, the lender (or an agent of the lender) places the order to the appraiser, becoming the appraiser's client.
Appraisers are typically limited to only disclosing their findings to their clients, so as
a homeowner, if you would like to obtain a copy of an appraisal report, you generally should obtain it from your lender instead of the appraiser.
There are some scenarios in which appraisers will have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, such as homeowners, buyers and sellers, or others. Generally the third parties are clearly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary duty is only to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other written parameters of the assignment.
Appraisers also have rules outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must store their work files for a minimum of five years - at Hancock Appraisals you can rest assured that we stick to that rule. Hancock Appraisals holds itself to the industry standards and mandates set in place for professional behavior. We can't accept anything less from ourselves. Accepting orders based on contingency fees is not something we can consider. In other words, we are not able to 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 a larger value with the reward of getting paid more money! We set ourselves to a higher standard. Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice explicitly 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" in addition to other situations We diligently follow these rules to the letter which means you can rest easy knowing we are going above and beyond to objectively determine the home or property value. With Hancock Appraisals, you won't have any doubts that you're receiving 100 percent ethical, honest service. |
|||||||||
