 Staton and Associates, LLC maintains the utmost professional ethicsAppraising is a profession, and appraisers are professionals. Requirements to become a licensed appraiser have become more difficult than ever before. So it goes without question in this day and age that real estate appraisal can unquestionably be dubbed a profession as opposed to a trade. In our field, as with any profession, we are bound by ethical considerations.
We have many responsibilities as appraisers, but first and foremost we answer 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.
Thereon, appraisers are privy to a lot of information, and like an attorney, can only discuss many of these matters with their client. As
a homeowner, if you would like to review the appraisal document, you generally should get it via your lender.
Appraisers may sometimes have fiduciary responsibilities to third parties, including homeowners, both buyers and sellers, or others. Typically the third parties are explicitly defined in the appraisal report. An appraiser's fiduciary role is limited to those third parties who the appraiser knows, based on the scope of work or other things in the framework of the assignment.
Appraisers also have rules outside of boundaries of clients and others. For example, appraisers must keep their work files for a minimum of five years - at Staton and Associates, LLC you can rest assured that we stick to that rule. We only perform to the highest ethical standards possible. Doing orders where our fee is dependent on our value conclusion is never an option. That means we are not able to agree to do an appraisal report and collect payment on the contingency of the loan closing. Anyone should be able to see that inflating a value to achieve essentially a bigger paycheck is unethical! We set ourselves to a higher standard. Finally, the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (or simply "USPAP") clearly 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", or "the amount of a value opinion" as well as other situations. We follow these rules to the letter which means you can be at ease knowing we are working hard to objectively determine the home or property value. When you engage Staton and Associates, LLC, we'll make sure you're getting the professional service you expect along with the business principles we're known for. |
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